


Second Base

by coolkidroland



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Family, Gay Male Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-04-20
Updated: 2011-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 10:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolkidroland/pseuds/coolkidroland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave never asked to be part of the Brady Bunch. This whole 'normal' thing is harshing his groove, really getting his non-ironic goat. John, of course, is delighted. (Post-game slice of life fic, cheerfully assumes a happy ending.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hello, John, are you there? It's me, real life.

**Author's Note:**

> Jumping feet first back into fandom, entirely unable to make Homestuck be quiet. This fic is mostly humorous, though with its main characters being teenagers it occasionally wanders into territory that teenagers find Very Deathly Serious. The title will end up making sense at some point, pinky promise.

Mom and Dad had a beautiful wedding. The punch was liberally spiked and everything was liberally pink. Dad’s groomsmen were three businessmen John had never met, but they were pleasant and they wore familiar hats. Mom’s bridesmaids happened to be two mad scientists and, well, Bro. Bro was wearing a pink tuxedo and Dave assured John that it was ironic every five minutes. John had it timed; Dave had developed a tendency to do things in increments, after the game.

            John didn’t really have it in him to go through the YOU’RE NOT MY REAL MOM crisis. For one thing, he never really had a mom. He had Nana, but she was Nana, and mostly dead most of the time. An ectobiologist, no matter how junior, learned to role with the familial punches. Besides, very pink, very drunk weddings meant that Rose was his sister! And Jade, too, of course.

            John had wondered out loud what that made Bro, and Dave told him that Bro was everyone’s Bro, are you an idiot or something. When John had continued on to wonder what that made _Dave_ , Dave just said,

            “I’m Dave, you chucklefuck. Like a motherfucking Tigger, I’m the only one. You try to hug me and I’m dumping punch in your hair.”

            Dave didn’t do hugs. John liked to pretend to respect that.

            Rose and Jade made really beautiful flower girls, but at the last minute they filled their baskets with rose petals dyed bright orange and blue. They clashed horribly with the décor. Jade, at least, was probably being sincere about it.

            Rose didn’t quite have a crisis, though she seemed to be reeling, in a quiet, Rose sort of way, about the possibility of her mother having real, non-ironically expressed affection. When Mom and Dad kissed, all sweet and goopy and loving and Karkat would have cried, John thought Rose’s head might explode.

            Bro rapped a toast accompanied by Cal, and it was kind of the most horrifying thing John had ever seen. The kind of thing that would give a boy screaming nightmares for life.

\---

            There was sort of an argument about Jade. Well, about where Jade was going to live. Dad was worried about a little girl out on an island all by herself, with only a dead guy and a dog for company, no matter how awesome both the dead guy and the dog were. Mom just said that Jade was an extremely intelligent girl, a budding mad scientist, and it would be a miserable waste of an opportunity for education and advancement, but if that was what Jade wanted, then she was of course free to choose.

            Rose explained that this was a guilt trip.

            Bec couldn’t really warp around the universe anymore, and he was probably less radioactive, but he was still good dog, best friend, and Jade wouldn’t leave him behind. Dad said he wouldn’t mind installing a doggy door.

            The house was new, and awesome, and John loved his great new room that didn’t have any graffiti on it. Jade decided she was going to live in the attic, which had a lot of windows and a spiral staircase up to an old fashioned cupola.

            There was a guilt trip for Dave too, and John assumed there was one for Bro out of hearing range, but Dave just shrugged his off. Then Mom ushered them into a room, locked the door behind her, and they didn’t come out for an hour. Not even the most advanced eavesdropping techniques could hear what was going on inside; a great many prankster’s gambits were lost that day.

            When they emerged, Bro looked manfully graceful in defeat, Dave looked kind of shell shocked, and Mom was just smug.

            “We’re moving up here,” Dave said later, as they sat on the back porch licking ice cream off their fingers. “Getting an apartment. Though I guess Rose’s crazy mom is getting us an apartment, ‘cause she’s like Albert Einstein in a dress and the world pays her a million dollars to stand around drinking martinis and pushing buttons.”

            Dave sounded like Texas, and John hoped that nobody else laughed as hard as he did when he first heard it. In retrospect, that made him kind of an asshole. Dave wouldn’t let him apologize.

            “You can come to school with us!” John’s fingers were stained mint chocolate chip green. “Mom says we’re all transferring to Rose’s school. There’s a uniform. I wonder if I can get a tie with Slimer embroidered on that.”

            “Dude, I will never speak to you again. I am dead serious. My serious got ran over, and even if they bury it in a creepy Indian cemetery it ain’t coming back.” He leaned back on his elbows, staring at the sunset. “Besides, Bro says I don’t have to go to school. We saved the world, I’m a _man_ now. I don’t gotta go to school if I don’t want.”

            “That’s not what Mom says.” This had already become John’s gospel.

            “I have been to like, five days of school in my entire life. I got better things to be doing. Sick rhymes to pen, you know, photos need developing. I can’t be wasting time hanging around with you plebes. You are so below me I could live in the ocean and talk like a douchebag.”

            “I bet,” John said, cheerfully, “that if you tell them you have an eye condition, they’ll let you wear your sunglasses.”

\---

            Dave told the school he had an eye condition; they let him wear his sunglasses.

            Jade tested out of every single science and math class the school offered. The faculty was absolutely giddy down to their toes to have her, and they called the local university to send over tutors. On the other hand, she seemed to have absolutely no idea who that William Shakespeare guy was.

            Dave got into Honors English with Rose, signed up for a bunch of art electives, and then failed to apply himself to anything else. John sat next to him during their aptitude test, and he knew that Dave just left the math section blank. John was happier to try his best and be pretty good at everything, even if he wasn’t some sort of scientific or dope rhymes super genius. Somebody needed to get okay grades without having to ask what algebra or J. D. Salinger was.

            John was _super excited_ to be in a new school. He’d never really been good at having real life friends, because no one could understand why Nicholas Cage was so awesome. It was a hurdle his friendships just couldn’t jump over. But, he figured, even if he didn’t do so good with these people, then he still had Jade and Rose and Dave around, and two of them living in the same house! That was super great. And the fancy private school had a film class, so maybe he could do his final project on how great Con Air was, and then people would understand.

            “Gym class is great!” Jade exclaimed, clattering her lunch tray down next to Rose’s. “Today we played dodgeball and some guy tried to make fun of me for being a girl and my teeth but we were on opposite teams and I think I broke that fuckass’s nose.”

            “I spend most of the day assuming you have deeply buried social psychoses that we will never be able to label,” Rose told her.

            “Next week we’re learning about football!”

            John didn’t like gym class an awful lot, but he found it a lot easier than he had before the game. Rose and Dave mostly skipped it, because effort wasn’t really ironic _or_ passive aggressive. Rose wanted a free period to write creepy wizard fanfic, and Dave did. Dave things. John still found those very mysterious, sometimes. Dave was a mysterious kind of guy.

\---

            One day, John discovered that Dave was a mysterious kind of asshole. John was totally okay with that, because that was just how Dave rolled, but John couldn’t even say that _some other people_ thought that Dave was an asshole. The matter had gone up for democratic vote, and the polls were back loud and clear, Dave is an Asshole for president, with Kick Dave’s Ass as a running mate. Not that Dave ever got his ass kicked, because he was Dave Mother Fucking Strider, but he kicked a lot of ass because people were trying to kick his and John was getting tired of the vicious cycle. The nurse was probably running out of band-aids.

            Jade made friends easy, because nobody wanted to hate Jade, not even the kids who bullied her. They just wanted to be close to Jade and had no idea how to say so, like trolls, so they made fun of her teeth and got their spirits broken during gym class instead. Jade ruled the math club with an iron fist and a smile, and if she realized even a fraction of how many pubescent boys (and girls) she had absolutely in love with her, she probably could have achieved world domination. They were the smart kids, after all. Instead she just helped them with their homework and collaborated on science projects and was earnestly kind and enthusiastic and one day they were going to get the scalpels from the biology lab and start fighting for her hand.

            Rose had friends. Friends who were quiet, and sat in the back of class finishing all their work before everyone else. They all wrote poetry and, John suspected, made fun of other people’s poetry while they were at it. They all wore lipstick, even the boys, and it kind of creeped John out but it wasn’t his place to say anything about boys who liked lipstick. He was kind of afraid someone would bite him.

            Even John made friends, which was pretty much the coolest thing that had ever happened, even cooler than God Tier. Who needed to be able to do the windy thing when the girl who sat next to him in history was totally cute and smart and thought he was funny? Her name was Dot _which was cute_ , and she introduced him to her friends, so then he had more friends! And they played Dungeons and Dragons on weekends. John always brought over cake.

            Dave did not make friends. Dave did not hang out with John’s friends. Dave didn’t even like to _talk_ to John about John’s friends, and told John that if he didn’t shut up about putrid nerds, he was going to get a swirly.

            That was around when John had realized that Dave was jealous.

            It was very awkward.

\---

            Unfortunately for Dave’s awkward, John had Exciting News. He also had an anxiety, since he didn’t want his Exciting News to push any buttons, or rain on any parades. Especially since, if someone questioned his Exciting News and acted like it was rain on their parade, or indeed on their wedding day, John thought he might get pretty angry about that.

            John sat at the kitchen counter one afternoon, sipping a soda and watching his dad make dinner. If this wasn’t the appropriate time for a Manly Chat, John didn’t know what was.

            “Dad, is Dave weird?”

            “He’s related to Mom, he probably needs a psychotherapist.” Dad chuckled and reached over to tousle John’s hair. “I’m just joshing you, son. What brings this up?”

            This was it, the big announcement, the Exciting News. “I have a girlfriend!”

            “Congratulations!” Dad took a breath to launch into a speech about Manhood and Achieving It, then paused, looked confused. “What does that have to do with Dave?”

            “I’m worried he’s going to get, like, weird. Weirder than usual. I invite him to come hang out with my friends all the time, but he never does. What if he decides to challenge her to a duel or something, I don’t know if Dave knows that that’s not how people work.” John endeavored to look very earnest and concerned, which wasn’t hard considering how earnest and concerned he was. “He thought that Christmas was about apprehending Santa Claus.”

            Dave had convinced Jade of this interpretation of the Christmas story, and he’d had her and Bec stationed on the roof with a rifle before John had intervened. Rose hadn’t been any help at all, because Rose liked to label things ‘sociological experiments’ and then titter politely behind her hand when someone fell off the roof and they all had to go to the hospital and try to stop Bec from savaging the doctors.

            “Have you asked Dave about it?” Dad asked.

            John scoffed. “You don’t _ask_ Dave things, Dad. He’s too cool for that stuff. You have to approach him sideways and then tackle him and pin him down and tickle him until he surrenders.”

            “Have you tried asking his brother?”

            John opened his mouth, shut it. Bro was a cool guy, the coolest of guys, and he’d helped them out a lot more than they’d ever realized during the game, but John just wasn’t up to talking to Bro much. John had been the sort of kid who took stranger danger very serious in kindergarten, and Bro kind of made him feel like he needed an adult. John was will to assume that this was mostly because of Cal, but Cal was _always there_ , watching.

            John settled on, “I don’t want Dave to feel like I’m getting into his business.”

            It sounded very adult and not at all like he was petrified of puppets.

            Dad nodded, a man to man acknowledgement of a dodge well crafted. “Well, the next person you should tell about this girlfriend of yours is Dave, I think. Make him feel like he’s in on your secret, instead of being excluded from a new part of your life.”

            John felt bad for all those other kids in the world, because he had the best and smartest dad on the entire planet. And probably all of the other planets in the universe, too.

            Dad listened, patiently and proud in all the right places, as John spent the next half an hour telling him about Dot, The Best and Coolest Girl in the Universe.

\---

            In his new room, Dave was working on covering his walls with a combination of home developed photography and paint. John didn’t know what to make of the fact that Dave was really honestly making an effort, two of the walls covered with a smearing red sunrise (sunset?) and the other two a splattering expanse of stars and maybe a glimpse of crawling, curling tentacles because Dave and Rose were like, planeteers of the bizarre. Did Dave want compliments? Would complimenting Dave’s cool walls just be the due given to something cool, or would it draw attention to something Dave gave a shit about, and then he would have to systematically destroy it to prove that he wasn’t being _earnest_ about something?

            Trying to guess anything about Dave was like trying to guess the prize at the bottom of the cereal box, except there actually wasn’t a prize, you had to send in your proof of purchase and then the post office lost your prize in the mail dungeons.

            Dave was taking a picture of a picture. John didn’t even know, so he just sat on Dave’s bed and ate the potato chips Dave had dug out of the closet.

            “Can I tell you something?” John asked, when the chips were gone and grease was no longer a viable barrier between him and this conversation.

            Dave looked up from his layers of photography. “Lay it on me, man.”

            “I have a girlfriend.”

            “No shit.” Dave’s eyebrows rose behind his shades. “Well, Karkles did draw that stupid fucking shipping chart.”

            John wrinkled his nose. “It’s not Rose. We live together, Mom and Dad are married – that’d be like. Ew. I mean, you wouldn’t actually date Jade, would you?”

            Dave snorted. “Fuck no,” he said in a way that managed to be both absolutely sincere and absolutely nervous, while also being absolutely deadpan. “Who is it, then? I keep telling you, Liv Taylor don’t actually count.”

            “It’s Dot!” John couldn’t help but bounce a little. “She has computer class with us, sits next to me in history?”

            “Oh yeah, one of your basement dwellers.”

            “Dave,” John whined, “we don’t even go in anyone’s basement.”

            “Yeah, ‘cause your girlfriend doesn’t want you to see her My Little Pony porn collection.”

            “You’re horrible.”

            “So, you doing the badly thought out, terrible consequences teenage nasty yet?”

            “We’re fourteen!” John had to throw his hands up when he said that, there was nothing else for it.

            “Fuck, really? I hadn’t even noticed. It’s like I’m fourteen too or something. Oh man, we got this thing called the _internet_ , and it’s totally bad for us. Don’t use it John, you might see naked people.”

            “I know what naked people look like!”

            Dave obviously did not believe him. “Look, there’s no way I’m ever going to put a baby in some chick, so I have to live vicariously through the experiences of your flailing stupidity. You could start a blog about it and we’d make millions off of ads.”

            “You’re trying to distract me!” John accused, accusingly.

            “From what? Condoms?”

            “Your feelings!” That sounded stupid as soon as it said it, but there it was, hanging out in the air between them, and damned if John had even known what he meant.

            Dave dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “I don’t got no feelings for your girlfriend. Calm down, dude, I’m just yanking your chain. I promise that I won’t ask her about her due date when we’re hanging out, just don’t be such a fucking spaz.”

            “Yeah,” John said. “Sure, sorry. You got any food around here, like real food?”

            “We can order Chinese.”

            Dave was a nut so tough to crack that most of the time he just ended up rebounding the hammer into your skull.

\---

            Dave started getting into more fights. John suspected Dave of starting this fights, then he _knew_ Dave was starting the fights because he saw it happen. Dave jostled some kid – Bobby McNair, from John’s English Lit class – and then started hassling him, insulting his mother and then just spiraling down into an absolutely incoherent smear of sick burns. Bobby didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he knew when he was being challenged.

            John tried to interfere. He said something like Dave no, stop, you are being a stupid asshole. Dave just took his shades off and handed them back to John, like they were in Fight Club or something and John was just an imaginary friend. Except John the imaginary friend was saying useful things like Put your fucking sunglasses back on we are going to go get milkshakes or something holy shit you are that stupid person I know, my own personal stupid person, stop stop stop.

            Once the fight started in earnest, fists flying and blood going places blood had never gone before, John stood paralyzed. He wanted to help, but he didn’t know how. Fighting imps and crazy gods from beyond the universe was one thing, hurting a human being who hadn’t done anything but be in Dave’s way that day was another completely. John thought about hitting Dave, but he couldn’t do that, either. He grabbed the back of Dave’s uniform sweatervest and tried to pull him off Bobby McNair.

            Jade entered the fray screaming and, more importantly, swinging. John didn’t know what she had in her backpack that day, but Bobby McNair’s skull didn’t appreciate it.

            It occurred to John then that Dave and Jade were both psychopaths, and hopefully Dave really never would be into Jade because _what if they had babies._ Everyone would be doomed. All of the everyones.

            A science teacher came careening down the hallway to break up the fight, and that was how they all ended up in the principal’s office. Except Bobby McNair, who had to take a field trip to the ER.

            “Mr. McNair has a concussion,” the principal informed them, very solemnly.

            Jade’s hackles were still up. “Mr. McNair can suck my left tit.”

            One of the secretaries made a noise.

            John refused to give Dave his sunglasses back, because Dave had to feel bad for what he’d done before he earned the cool dude shades. John hoped that the school called Dave’s Bro, and Dave got a serious talking to about only using his powers for good, not evil, and not attacking people weaker than him.

            Deep in his heart, John knew that Bro would react to this by buying Dave a popsicle and congratulating him on the effortless smack down. Jade would probably get a popsicle too, and John would get nothing because John was a wuss who did not believe in resorting to violence. That hadn’t even been resorting to violence. That had been inviting violence in for tea and then sloppily making out with it on the table.

            Someone at the school must have realized what sort of discipline went down in the Strider apartment, because they called Mom and Dad instead. John felt very small and ashamed, especially since he’d been so grown up and man-to-man talks and girlfriend having lately.

            Luckily, the first words out of the principal’s mouth were, “I want you to know that John’s not in trouble. David and Jade, however, will be lucky if no one decides to press charges.”

            “I have lawyers!” Jade shouted, balling her hands into fists. “He’ll go to jail for breathing!”

            Dad put a hand on Jade’s shoulder. “I’m sure it doesn’t have to come to that.”

            “He attacked Dave!”

            “I started it,” Dave said. He was slouched down in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, the undisputed king of Don’t Give a Fuck.

            Jade’s rage deflated. “ _Dave._ ”

            “ _Jade._ ” And then, probably just for good measure, “ _John._ ”

            “What?” John stared up at the principal, blue eyed and imploring. “I’m sorry, and Dave’s sorry. He just doesn’t know he’s sorry because he’s a crazy person.”

            Dave kicked John’s chair.

\---

            In the end, numerous apologies from everyone but Dave, a sincere promise from Mom and Dad that this would be dealt with at home, a week’s worth of in school suspension for Dave and three afterschool detentions for Jade, and they were free to go. John gave Dave his sunglasses back, because as much as they teased him about being a cool kid, he did need them outside on the glaringly sunny day. Rose was waiting for them in the atrium, sitting cross legged on the floor in front of the security station, reading a book twice the size of any normal, rational book.

            “I am perpetually relieved that you decide to embark on these adventures without me,” she told Dave, examining the bruise blooming on his left cheek. “I do think that being your standard bearer would make me throw up a little. Are you all right?”

            “All of the rights are just dandy.” Dave pushed her fingers away from his face. “Copasetic. Swell. I’m going home now, Lalonde, get your girl paws off of me.”

            Mom wrapped an arm around Dave’s shoulders, and everyone knew he was doomed.

            “You’ll be coming home with us, David,” she said, the executioner making sure that her axe didn’t have any unsightly dust on it. “It just so happens that your brother spoke to me this morning, and he’s going to be out of town for a week.”

            John wondered how voluntary that conversation had been. Mom had a way with words, sweet and sharp. He often wondered why she wasn’t President. Or god-queen, or something.

            “So?” Dave tried to shrug her off, and failed spectacularly. “I can take care of myself for a whole week, promise. All I gotta do is remember to drink tap water or some shit and I won’t even die or nothing.”

            “No, no, we couldn’t possibly leave you all on your lonesome. You’ll be staying with us, of course, to make sure that you’re fed and watered and don’t take exception to anyone else’s breathing. Really, you have excellent timing.”

            Dave twitched.

            It was never fun for all of them to squeeze into Dad’s sedan. Dave offered to ride strapped to the roof (‘you could go under a real low bridge and put me out of my misery’), but ended up sitting up front, in the middle, like a four year old or a dangerous convict. John decided it was better for Dave’s dignity if they just ignored him until they got home.

\---

            John knew his Dad well enough to know that he’d delay a Parental Conversation with Dave until it didn’t have to happen in front of the other kids, but as soon as they were in the foyer Dave planted his feet and crossed his arms. John could have made him a sign, and it would have said ‘come at me, bro.’

            “Now that you’ve gone and kidnapped me and all, I got a couple of questions. I know you expect me to huddle naked in the god damned basement, but do I get a flogging if I bang on the pipes? I can probably whip up some sweet fucking tunes, but you’re gonna have to throw some slop down the stairs every once in awhile or I ain’t gonna have no rhythm.”

            If Mom had been a weaker woman, she might have had to roll her eyes to express the width and breadth of how over Dave’s theatrics she was. Because she was Mom, all she had to do was quirk a smile, kiss Dad on the cheek, and disappear off toward her laboratory. Rose went upstairs with similar aplomb, and Jade muttered some excuse and hurried away, but John was rooted to the spot. This was like watching someone poking a great big dog with a  pointy stick.

            John wasn’t a kid who misbehaved much, especially since the mischief he got up to wasn’t really the kind Dad thought of as bad. John could count the number of times he’d been really, truly In Trouble on one hand. The worst part of it had never been being grounded, or having to do all the yard work, or having his computer taken away; none of that lived up to the crushing force of having disappointed his father. Maybe Dave was immune.

            Dad pulled a pipe out of one of his pockets, packed it and lit it while patiently waiting to see how deep Dave’s hole was going to get. Before Dave even opened his mouth again, John knew that Dave was going to dig like the Shoveling Gold Medal depended on him getting to China.

            Dave tilted his chin up, arrogant. “This is straight up bullshit. I don't care what the school thinks about you two being dear old uncle and aunty. I make one call to CPS and tell ‘em that Rose touches me at night with her tentacles and I’ll be in foster care up to my ears in fucking charity teddy bears, cradled in the loving bosoms of a hundred middle aged social workers, the mother fucking paragon of post traumatic stress.”

            Dad waited to make sure he was done, then said, “First of all, you’re not imprisoned. You are grounded, but your brother gave us a key to the apartment. I’ll swing by and pick up some clothes and your school books.”

            “No,” said Dave; John winced. “I ain’t been grounded a day in my god damned life.”

            “I imagine not. Now’s a good a time to start as any!” Dad chuckled. “And now you owe at least three dollars to the swear jar.”

            That threw Dave for a loop. “What?”

            “The f-word is a dollar.”

            “John swears all the fucking time!”

            Dave was a _traitor,_ a violator of the bro code. John would have challenged him to a duel at dawn, but that would have been admitting that Dave was telling the truth. The problem with Dave was he’d never really had a parent, so he couldn’t figure out the right time to just buckle down, look innocent, and lie through his teeth.

            “Not in my house, he doesn’t.”

            John decided it was best for him not to speak up, and that typing on the computer didn’t really count as in the house, as such.

            Dave flipped Dad the bird, which was how Dave ended up standing in the corner in the living room with both hands on his head. He’d obviously been braced for an epic battle, so when Dad settled for taking him firmly by the shoulder and steering him into time out, something in the cool kid clicked off. John could practically see the little gears whirring in Dave’s head, failing to catch.

\---

            “Perhaps he will feel better if you tell him whose fault the swear jar is,” Rose suggested, not even pausing in her knitting.

            Jade pouted. “How was I supposed to know you aren’t supposed to say fuck in front of old people?”

            “I just want to know why he’s going around hassling people in the first place.” John sighed. “That’s not like him, is it?”

            Rose did something complicated with three different needles. “I imagine Dave is feeling a little bit outclassed at this point, or perhaps isolated. He is nearby, but he is not part of the traditional family structure we’ve created. Furthermore, you’ve now jumped ahead of him on a maturity milestone. I’m afraid you’re just too good at normalcy, John.”

            “I don’t understand half the words that come out of your mouth,” John told her.

            “Why does Dave want to be normal?” Jade asked. “None of us are! I was raised by a dog! He’s being stupid.” She kicked a stuffed squiddle across the floor. “I can’t believe I gave a guy a concussion for him.”

            “I’m sorry that Dave doesn’t appreciate your chivalry,” Rose said. “You are an admirable sister, Jade.”

            “I should go give him a noogie.”

            “I don’t think noogies are allowed in time out,” John said.

            He also didn’t think Jade really knew what a noogie was, and if Dave had given her a definition it might involve fire.

            “Of course,” Rose continued, “Dave could also be overcompensating for his anxieties. You’ve presented him with a conundrum: as long as you remained without a girlfriend, Dave could credit his lack of one to your mutual low point on the maturity spectrum. However, now that the cool kid has been outclassed by the, excuse me, John, nerd, he really has no excuse.”

            John followed Rose about as well as a three legged dog followed a sports car. “Dave can’t be all pissy with me because he can’t get a girlfriend. All he has to do is go up to some girl and be all ‘look at me I have two emotions and none of them are interested in you’ and she’ll be planning their wedding.”

            “Not that he doesn’t have a girlfriend, but rather that he doesn’t want one.”

            John threw his hands in the air. “Then what’s he getting upset about?”

            “Given that he was raised by his brother, who is a good man but something of a frat boy in demeanor and general linguistic quirks, I don’t imagine Dave is ready to throw a parade about his homosexuality.”

            Rose continued to knit. Jade frowned and gnawed her lip, as if trying to work out an exceedingly difficult math problem. John’s brain screeched, then threw itself into reverse and backed up the thought truck; something thumped and got ran over in the process.

            “Dave’s gay?” he blurted. “He told you?”

            Rose rolled her eyes. “He didn’t need to tell me. Observation makes outright declarations rather frivolous. I no more needed you to tell me you were straight after we watched Armageddon together and you couldn’t take your gaze from Liv Taylor’s chest.”

            “Neither could you!” John shouted, pointed accusingly at her.

            “Liv Taylor is an attractive woman.”

            Rose made no shy secret of her rotating cadre of girlfriends and boyfriends, all picked on a month to month basis from her circle of weirdo goth friends. As far as John could tell, they were all involved in some weird incestuous swinger trade, and most of those relationships kissing chastely and then writing bad poetry about it. Not even his scientific curiosity wanted to know what would happen when their tightly knit bundle of hormones exploded, especially because it involved his sister.

            “Have you ever thought about asking Dave?” Jade asked, because she _was_ full of scientific curiosity, and hated to come to any conclusion without an experiment to bear it out.

            “You try it,” Rose said. “Tell me how that goes.”


	2. Dave, Ironic Boy Wonder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After this chapter, updates will come quite a bit slower.

Dave stood in the corner, his nose pressed against the plaster, and contemplated his shitty life. Sure, some people would think this was all pretty sweet, whole new apartment paid for by the crazy lady and everything. Bro had his own room now, which meant that most of the creepy puppet paraphernalia was contained to one place that Dave made a point to never, ever visit. But this was totally some comfort versus freedom, 1984 bullshit. What the fuck kind of fourteen year old got a time out in the bad boy corner?

            Dave Strider, that’s who.

            He knew he should have just turned around and marched out the door, but they had his backpack, which had his keys. He wasn’t living on the streets for a week, not until they hit him or Rose’s crazy mother tried to use him in her human experiments. This was child abandonment. Bro had straight up, down right dumped him on a pair of psychopaths, the demon lady and her pipe smoking consort. Probably wasn’t even tobacco in that pipe, just weed and confectionary sugar or whatever other weirdo drug brew had made someone raise a kid like John.

            When Bro got back Dave was going to cut up all his fucking smuppets, make him custom order all that shit from scratch.

            “Have you calmed down now?” John’s Dad asked. (Even Rose and Jade just called him _Dad_ , but he sure as hell wasn’t Dave’s. Did he even have a name? Did the demon lady? Bro’s real name, the one some social worker had put down on some bullshit birth certificate, was Richard. Dave had laughed his ass off when he found out, called Bro Dick for a solid week before he’d come home from school to find his room full of smuppet and then gotten his ass kicked all around the roof.)

            “I have always been calm. I am a zen master. The Dalai Lama calls me up when he’s feeling kind of cranky, asks me if I’ve got some calm to spare, and I say sure motherfucker, I’ll help a bro out.”

            “Language, Dave. You’re done now, though.”

            Dave dropped his aching arms with relief. He must have spent half a fucking hour contemplating the god awful shade of blue of the living room wall. His sunglasses made it even more putrid, but damned if he was going to give up his shades just so he could critique some interior decorating.

            John’s Dad – fuck it, Mr. Egbert – was standing in the door way, pipe in his mouth even though he wasn’t even smoking it, looking all fatherly disappointed. Dave had seen that look before, from teachers and from social workers. The social workers liked to tell him that it wasn’t funny to call CPS just because his guardian (refused to call Bro his brother) wouldn’t let him play Xbox, but that was outright lying because it was the most hilarious fucking thing in the universe. Dave had practically made a hobby out of calling CPS and seeing how much not made up shit they wouldn’t believe. The fuzzy porn dildo puppets are everywhere, he’d tell them, they move on their own. I think they’re fucking haunted by the spirit of muppets past. And the social workers would get mad and hang up, and Dave would congratulate himself on the tiers of the irony cake he was icing so fucking beautifully.

            “Bro lets me talk however I want,” Dave said, and knew he sounded kind of six.

            Mr. Egbert made a kind of humming noise, like psychiatrists did in movies when they didn’t want to say things like ‘you need a shit ton of medication.’ “While you’re grounded, of course, you’ll have no access to the internet. However, I know that a young boy without any distractions can get up to mischief, so I was wondering if there was anything I pick up from your apartment for you.”

            Some part of Dave wanted to refuse to cooperate, to dig his feet in and rebel so hard that Darth Vadar would be after him, but he knew that at some point you just had to work the system.

            “My camera,” he said. “The digital one, since I can’t develop nothing here. It’s on my desk. Sketchbook and the pastels, too.”

            He was working on an un-birthday irony present for Rose, lots of horror terrors done in bright squiddle colors. He was sure that she’d have them elegantly framed, and that would be so fucking worth the money he’d spent on real fancy pastels.

            “You’re an artist?” Mr. Egbert asked, all interested and shit.

            “Nah, I like to smear ‘em all over my body and then roll around the floor. Fucks up the carpet.” Terezi would approve.

            “That’s two dollars so far. Now.” Mr. Egbert sat down in one of the armchairs. “Do you want to sit down and tell me why you started a fight with that boy?”

            Dave did not want to sit down, so he didn’t. “He was playing grab ass with me. Gotta enforce the no homo.”

            “I wonder,” Mr. Egbert said, thoughtful-like, “if we could calculate a ratio for how much of what comes out of your mouth is utter poppycock.”

            “Did you just say poppycock?” God, no wonder John was so terminally fucked in the head. “Look man, I am absolutely sincere. I am so god awful truthful I could be an oracle, laying down prophecy better than Jade when she’s huffing cloud. Every word out of my mouth is a diamond of veracity, I say sooths with alarming perspicacity.” He liked that rhyme; he’d keep it.

            “Mr. McNair says he barely even knows who you are.”

            “Yeah, didn’t stop him from goosing me, did it?”

            Dave didn’t care if he got Bobby McNair in trouble. Bobby McNair played baseball and had the shoulders to show for it, and stupid fucking hair that got into his stupid fucking eyes, and bullshit freckles that Dave didn’t have to put up with. What kind of guy had freckles all out there and cute and shit? The kind of guy who deserved to be punched in the face, that’s who.

            “Dave, you are alarmingly close to being expelled.”

            Dave shrugged. “Won’t be the first time, will it?”

            One school had expelled him for being absent too often, which was just about the stupidest fucking thing that had ever happened to Dave. It was ironic, but in a way that went right over the moon and landed in a sea of idiocy, swimming with drooling mermaids.

            “You got Jade into trouble, which could have been much more serious.”

            Dave did feel kind of shitty about that. “Not like I asked her to step in. I had it handled.”

            “Go to your room, Dave. I’ll be back in a little while with your things.”

            “Guest room,” Dave reminded him.

\---

            Dave was taking pictures of his ceiling (stupid 1980s swirling patterns in the plaster, but you could just pretend you saw faces if you got the angle and the light right) when John and Jade barged into the guest room like some sort of crack addled parade, all smiles and sunshine to see him in the penitentiary. Jade jumped on the bed, standing over him and bouncing on her heels.

            “Dave!” She exclaimed, because if Jade had a knob then it was always, _always_ turned up to eleven. “We’re having a barbeque!”

            “I can’t come to no barbeque. I’m grounded, locked down, in the slammer. My crime was super serious.” If nothing else, that annoying exile had familiarized Dave with all sorts of fun po-po terms.

            She jumped higher, jostling him on the bed. “You have special dispensation! Because it’s a special barbeque, because John’s girlfriend is coming.”

            “She special too?”

            John leaned over the bed to flick Dave on the forehead. Dave let him, because he was feeling all sorts of magnanimous. Two days without Bro around was already starting to dull his reflexes. At this rate, some neighborhood kid was going to run him down on a tricycle.

            “Be nice to Dot, jackass,” John said.

            For whatever dumbass reason, John was still sore about Dave handing Bobby McNair his ass. Last time Dave had checked, John and McNair weren’t bosom buddies or nothing, so it was just John getting a bug up his butt about Truth, Justice and the American Way.

            “Look, Egbert, don’t go telling me to be nice to your old lady, ‘cause I will snatch that shit right out from under your nose. She will be swooning onto chaise lounges that she didn’t even know existed. She won’t be able to go three seconds without thinking of me naked.”

            John made a kind of face, and Dave had no idea what it meant. It looked sort of like he’d been caught halfway to a sneeze, or halfway to saying something stupid. If he’d stopped himself from blurting out the first idiot thing in his head, then it was a superpower he’d figured out while Dave wasn’t looking.

            “Rose says you’re repressed,” he said, which was pretty stupid anyway.

            “Yeah well you tell Rose I think she’s projecting, and if she wants to have a psychological throw down with me then she can step up instead of sending the messengers.”

            “Be nice to Dot,” John repeated, as if he could make it come true by wishing real hard. He did believe in fairies, he did, he did.

            “I’m a nice guy,” Dave said. “Why am I suddenly the not nice guy? Am I not cool, am I not smooth? Do I not seduce bitches across galaxies and universes?”

            “Rose says we shouldn’t abide by gendered insults in this household,” Jade said. “You can’t say bitches anymore or I’m going to give you such a bruise.”

            “Well damned if that ain’t one more excuse for you to beat the crap out of people.”

            John was at least smart enough to rescue Dave’s camera before Jade dove and started tickling.

\---

            Dave wasn’t allowed on the phone, of course, because the slightest piece of technology would fill him with insurmountable evil urges, and if he even looked sideways at the computer he’d start burning buildings or kicking homeless or whatever counted for evil in the Lalonde-Egbert household. That didn’t stop him from sneaking downstairs at two in the morning to grab the cordless and duck out onto the back patio. Dave thought about calling the cops and telling them he was being held against his will, but in the end he just dialed Bro’s cell number.

            “What up?” Bro answered, and it was relief to hear somebody talk like an actual human being.

            “You’re a cold blooded traitor, man,” Dave said.

            “Shit, kid, don’t be such a drama queen. I left you with worse people for a week before.”

            “Are you impugning Mrs. Radley’s honor because she fed me nothin’ but Waffle House and McDonald’s? She’s the only woman I’ll ever love. I’m gonna dig up her corpse and marry it, have the reception at Waffle House.”

            “Yeah, and then you threw up for a fucking month. I bought like three goddamned mops.”

            Out in the expansive backyard, which looked out over undeveloped pine forest, fireflies blinked. Bec slept curled up in front of his dog house, giving off a faint green glow. Dave wished for his camera, but he was too smart a ninja to risk going back in the house before he decided this conversation was over and done with.

            “A little McNugget induced eating disorder never hurt nobody. But you can’t go changing the subject, Bro. Did the demon lady chase you out of state for a week on purpose? Because I’m fucking grounded.”

            “What for?”

            “Starting fights, like they’re so goddamned surprised. I’m Catholic and they’re Martin Luther, trying to nail a reformation to my ass.”

            “Might do your ass good. Don’t be a fag about it.”

            Dave tried very hard not to flinch, even though his brother couldn’t see him. “Where you at, anyway?”

            “I met a girl. But you know how the internet is, decided that if she was a serial killer I wanted to find out at her place, not ours.”

            “Oh my god,” said Dave. “You ain’t in Vegas or nothing, right? You ain’t gonna come home married to some chick, because I do not need a new mommy.”

            “I get married, kid, I promise you’re invited.”

            “You’re a dick. You met her through your goddamn website, didn’t you? My life is going to turn into the kinky puppet porno power hour. Wait, dude, is she a puppet? ‘Cause I will call the loony bin, have you locked up.”

            Bro just laughed. “You wanna talk to her?”

            “Hell no. Gotta let the Dave Strider mystery build up a little.”

            “Go be grounded.”

            “Yeah, Bro. Peace out.”

            Dave hung up the phone. At least now he knew that Bro hadn’t fucked off somewhere permanent-like. Why the hell did everyone have a god damned girlfriend of all of a sudden? Was it mating season for crazy fucking broads?

            The kitchen light clicked on behind him.

\---

            Ms. Lalonde made them hot chocolate, though hers was at least halfway alcohol. She never seemed to be drunk, but the whole deal never stopped weirding Dave out. Bro didn’t drink much, at least not at the apartment, always told Dave that it was never good to trade ninja reflexes for a buzz. Bro didn’t smoke, either, so all this wine guzzling, pipe puffing Beaver Clan nonsense was fucking with Dave’s head something awful.

            “We would have allowed you to call your brother if you’d asked.”

            “Excuse my psychic powers for not picking up on ‘no phone’ actually secretly meaning ‘phone if you ask pretty nice.’ I thought maybe you’d killed the poor bastard and hidden his body in the woods, I was checking up on my Bro.”

            Ms. Lalonde smiled prettily. “If I ever decided to kill someone, you would not have time or reason to be suspicious.”

            “Good to know. I will write that down, like a secretary of psychopathy.”

            She laughed, just like Bro had, not even pretending to take him seriously. He was a real riot today, regular stand up comedian. He’d quit his day job if they’d let him.

            Ms. Lalonde delicately chugged her not-cocoa, then patted him on the head like he was Bec playing fetch. “Get your sleep, we have a soiree tomorrow, remember? By the way, any further attempts to seek privileges your punishment denies you will result in further punishment.”

            Dave was going to die in this stupid house, he knew it in his bones.

\--

            The barbeque was about as phenomenally lame as Dave had expected. All of John’s dweeby little friends were there, and if Dave wasn’t careful he was going to catch a serious case of acne off of all the loser floating around in the air. John was Dave’s bro, his brother from another ecto-mother, but they sure as hell weren’t married, and Dave hadn’t promised to take the good with the bad and the ugly. Though, props to John, his girlfriend was okay if you liked pigtails and sundresses and braces.

            Dot and Jade got along like a house on fire, Dot all unawares that Jade had been the one to set the house on fire in the first place, and the police would never catch her. Rose surveyed them all from her lofty retreat of expensive patio furniture, and Dave figured that was better than choking on the combined fumes of half a dozen D&D nerds.

            “I say we introduce John to some real people, see if we can still get him to imprint on them,” Dave said, flopping down on the chair next to hers.

            “He’s not a duckling.”

            “Don't tell me you approve of the Mickey Mouse Club.”

            “They’re John’s friends,” she demurred, because she didn’t want to say ‘yes, Dave, you are totally right, and if we have to hang around them we should start putting together deodorant gift baskets.’ “This isn’t a contest.”

            “What ain’t?”

            “Puberty.”

            Sometimes, Rose Lalonde opened her mouth and words came out, but sense just wasn’t along for the ride. About twenty miles back, sense had done a tuck and roll from the car going fifty miles on the highway, and now sense was smeared against a pine tree somewhere in New Jersey.

            “Will you spontaneously combust if you stop being a cryptic fuck? Puberty and I are pretty tight.”

            “Life, then.” She put a finger in her book to her mark her page and deigned to look up at him. “You don’t have to resent John just because he’s hitting these afterschool special milestones, and you don’t have to take that resentment out on others.”

            Dave propped his elbows on his knees and his chin in his palms. “Do you know, we’re probably like two genetic dance steps away from freak albino? We’re lucky we get to go outside without full on beekeeping uniforms and shit, keep the sun away from our tender, pasty skin. That’s where ecto-incest gets you, the chromosomal snake eating its own tail and _bam_ little purple and red eyed what the fuck babies.”

            Rose’s left eyelid started to twitch, but Dave had seen her grimdark. No regular old pissed off Rose Lalonde could faze him.

            “I am attempting to keep you from getting yourself expelled, and eventually incarcerated.”

            “Damn, Rose, not even Bro’s been to jail. Thanks for those sky high hopes.”

            “I imagine your brother had you to focus on, and that kept him out of very serious trouble. Unless you plan to plunk a baby out of the burning ruins of a meteor, I suggest you find some other way to set yourself straight.”

            Dave slumped backward in his chair, tilting his head back to stare at the sun through his shades. “If I found a baby, I would name it Dope Master Radtaculous.”

            “You are masterful at turning conversations away from yourself.”

            “Can’t hog all the conversations, like I’m a conversational slut, my skirt all hiked up and begging for words in every orifice.”

            He didn’t need to look at Rose to know what disapproving face she was making. Whatever chance she had to scold him was interrupted by Dot wandering over to stand in their sunlight, two bottles of soda in her hands, held forward like peace offerings, Please God Don’t Shoot. Dave tipped his face down, examined her over the top of his sunglasses. She was a little bit chubby, all soft and harmless, and she was smiling at them the way people smiled when they were stuck in a room with serial killers or politicians.

            “Hi,” she chirped. “I’m Dot.”

            “Shit, really? And here I was gonna start making nametags for all the people macking on John.”

            “Dave,” Rose warned.

            “Sorry,” David said, more to Rose than to Dot. He _had_ promised he’d behave. “What up? How’s life in the Egbert circle?”

            She smiled so big the sun glinted on her braces, a pure and effervescent joy at the world giving her John Egbert to date. The girl was obviously doolally tap, in serious need of some support group post haste.

            “Pretty good. Here! I brought you sodas, and your Dad says the burgers’ll be ready soon.”

            “Thank you,” Rose said, and took the soda even though she was in some sort of contest with her mother over which of them could eliminate more things from their diet in the name of social and environmental consciousness. High fructose corn syrup was Satan’s sweetner, and totally off Rose’s menu for at least the next week.

            “Not my Dad,” Dave felt compelled to tell Dot, even though it wasn’t cool to so obviously give a shit.

            “Oh. Well, have a soda anyway?”

            Dot was about as obnoxiously sweet as they came, and probably kind of a dim bulb, but Dave figured John was allowed to keep her around.

\---

            Dave won his iPod back for good behavior and not making John’s girlfriend cry. It felt good to have music in his ears again, a rhythm to count and offset the seconds ticking by in his brain. It also felt good to be able to crank up the volume and drown out whatever pants-on-head stupid thing John was saying. All Dave had to do was making it a few more days without saying fuck in front of an adult or downloading three gigs of German fetish porn to John’s computer (and e-mailing it to his girlfriend), then he was home free.

            Rose was right, though he’d never tell her so; he had to work off some excess energy. He’d been lazy without Bro around, and if Bro came home to find him all soft and flabby Dave was going to find himself with a formal invitation to an ass kicking.

            Dave did not go jogging. Jogging was too close to power walking, the exercise of bored housewives and fat corporate schmucks everywhere. Dave went running, and left all joggers eating his Strider dust. All they saw was a flash of cool, and they fell to their knees on the sidewalk, weeping.

            Jade and Bec were by the door, Bec wearing the world’s most useless, unnecessary leash and Jade lacing up her running shoes.

            “Where you going?” Dave asked.

            Jade beamed up at him, and his blood ran cold. “With you!”

            “Whoa, whoa, look. You can’t just go around extending your own invitations to things, it’s rude. That’s a politeness offense’ll get you shipped off to Charm School, balancing books on your head. Didn’t anybody learn you about manners?”

            “Nope!”

            Dave, though he’d never admit it, knew his own defeat when he saw it. “What’s day-glo wearing a leash for?”

            “We got in trouble.” Jade sighed mightily. “The stupid neighbors won’t believe me when I tell them Bec’s smarter than they are.”

            “Yeah, well, they’re pretty fucking stupid.” Dave shook his headphones at her. “This ain’t going to be a social outing. I’m chilling with some tunes, and if you can’t keep up with the Strider you get left behind.”

            “You know, in real life you can be such a loser sometimes.” But Jade was smiling, and it was too early to take offense. “Come on, coolkid.”

            Jade kept up. She didn’t even try to yammer once Dave put his headphones on. If it weren’t for Bec’s soft glow in the early morning half-light, he might not have noticed they were even there. Maybe it was pretty nice, hanging out with somebody and just shutting up for once. Dave supposed that if he had to put up with this family bonding, brother-sister bullshit, Jade was pretty tolerable.

            They stopped near the idyllic park that _of course_ these rich bastards had plunked down in the middle of their neighborhood, sitting on a bench to chug water. Dave pulled his headphones off, graciously granting Jade permission to speak in his presence.

            Jade scratched Bec between his ears. “You know, Rose says you’re gay.”

            Dave’s life sucked donkey dick.

\---

            There was still an hour before school left by the time Dave had run home, showered the stink of exercise off, and cracked open the door to Rose’s room. She was bundled up in purple blankets, head barely visible. Dave slipped into her room, shut the door quietly behind him, and strode over to her bed. He grabbed the edge of her blankets, and yanked them all off the bed, sending her tumbling and shouting. Rose came up from the floor half asleep and swinging, but he ducked her fist easily; she was shouting something with way too many consonants, but she couldn’t make his eyes bleed outside of the game.

            Finally, she got her bearings, and peered hazily at Dave through the nasty crust on her eyelashes. “What the hell, Strider?”

            “Don’t what the hell me, _Lalonde._ What the hell _you._ Why you going around telling Jade I suck cock?”

            “Fellatio never entered into the conversation, actually.”

            “I’m gonna kick your ass so hard you’re gonna launch into orbit with the horrorterrors.”

            Her smirk was grim, dark even. “Would you really hit a girl?”

            “Don’t give me that bullshit, of course I’d hit a girl. And you’d hit _me_ if I said any different.”

            “You’re learning, very good. Now, I have to get ready for school, so I’d appreciate it if you removed yourself from my room.”

            Dave’s temper wanted to get all up in her face, shove her. He stayed back, crossed his arms over his chest, refused to lose his cool more than he already had. If he threw a hissy fit, he could just hear Rose cackling and _blah blah blah the lady doth protest too much blah._ He had to be chill, play this close to the chest; he could be offended on behalf of his dignity, but not all personal-like.

            He enunciated each word carefully, so that she couldn’t pretend to misunderstand because he was from Texas or something. “Why did you tell Jade I was a pillow biter?”

            “Do you even understand the implications of that insult, or are you simply parroting your brother? Heterosexuals are fully capable of biting pillows, and I imagine some couples bite a great many of them.”

            “Not in the mood.”

            “You did say that you would marry Bruce Willis.”

            “ _Ironically._ ”

            Dave was going to write a letter of complaint to Bruce Willis, depend compensation for the bullshit his manly action hero self had spawned.

            Rose raised an eyebrow at him, a move she’d learned from her mother. “Of course. Jade has sworn herself to silence.”

            There was something she wasn’t telling him, but he’d never been able to pry open Rose’s head. He didn’t really want to, because once you’d sunk a crowbar into that shit there was no beating back the tentacles.

            “This ain’t your creepy wizard fanfic. I ain’t gay, end of story. I don’t want to hear anything else about it.”

            “Of course.”

            Dave was tempted to institutionalize himself just for being related to Rose Lalonde.

\---

            Sunday morning, karma repaid Dave for tumbling Rose out of bed. He figured he actually had a few points in his favor now, a little schadenfreude owed to Rose Lalonde, because that karma came in the form of Bro. One minute Dave was snoozing and drooling and bed, and the next he was being hauled up by the collar of his t-shirt. Dave twisted and squirmed, managed to get himself turned around enough to bite Bro’s wrist. Bro dropped him, and Dave landed on his back on the floor with an _oomph._ Bro pointed a finger right between Dave’s eyes.

            “Backyard, little bro. Time to make sure you’re not rusty.”

            Dave scrambled to his feet, pulled some jeans on over his boxers and jammed his shades on his face. He hoped that Bro hadn’t brought his sword, because there was sure as shit no bladed weapons hanging around this house. He thought about stopping in the kitchen to grab a butcher knife, but Bro was usually nice enough to warn him if he should show up armed.

            The backyard looked empty. Dave pretty much expected Bro’s jump off the roof, spun and dodged the fist aimed for the back of his head.

            By the time their spar was winding down, they’d attracted an audience. Dave, pretty occupied, caught only glimpses. John was cheering him on, which was dorky but kind of nice; Mr. Egbert didn’t look like he approved, but that probably could have been on account of the flower bed they’d torn up. Bro aimed a punch at Dave’s face, a punch Dave probably would have dodged before he’d started skipping gym class. He and Bro realized at about the same time that he wasn’t going to duck it, and he saw Bro pull the punch so that it would bloody Dave’s nose instead of breaking it.

            Pretty rusty, yeah.

            Dave stared up at the sun, flat on his back in the grass.

            “Slow, dude,” Bro said.

            “It’s a Sunday, man. Just don’t got it in me to hardcore brawl on the Sabbath. God is watching.”

            “God’s watching me kick your ass.” Bro tossed a hankie pulled from god knows where onto Dave’s face. “Shove that up your nose.”

            John skidded to a halt on the dew damp grass as Dave was pushing himself up and stuffing up the blood flow.

            “Holy shit!”

            Dave smirked, tasting copper on the back of his tongue and feeling better than he had all week. “That’s a quarter for the swear jar.”

            “You’re bleeding!”

            Bro punched John’s shoulder, a sissy little punch that still made John stumble. “Don't sweat it, kid, he’s got like seven pints of the stuff.”

            John made a choking, strangled little noise, like a squeaky toy being stepped on.

 


	3. John, Player of All Games

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! I work six days a week, but my daily grind finally coughed up a vacation to work on writing (though I did spend yesterday getting a wisdom tooth yanked right out my head).
> 
> If it has escaped your notice, this fic deals with teenagers figuring out all the weird things that go along with sex and sexuality. It's pretty much nothing you wouldn't see in an after school special, and the rating will never, ever push PG-13, but there is an acknowledgment that fourteen year old boys know what breasts are.
> 
> Things will also jump around a bit, skipping days and weeks here and there, because if it's not funny or not involved in the 'plot,' I probably won't get into it.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed! I'm sorry I don't have time to respond to every comment, but I do want you to know that every word is appreciated. It really makes me smile, even past my tooth stitches.

Dave insisted that he made a hankie shoved up his nose look cool, but John didn’t believe him. At the end of the day, Dave would still be a kid with something shoved up his nose, and that was so uncool it didn’t even have a chance to loop around into irony.

            In some final act of parental authority, Dad made Dave dry the breakfast dishes while John washed. The whole week had been a crash course in chores for Dave, who didn’t even understand why they had dishes in the first place. John’d also had to explain vacuum cleaners and the subtleties of not just walking around dirty laundry until you absolutely had to wash your clothes. It never ceased to amaze John that Dave wasn’t a little smelly.

            John handed Dave a plate. “It was neat having you around.”

            Dave, thankfully, had a little too much pride to pretend a fumble and break dishes just to get out of chores.

            “Don’t ask me to stay. You could write me all sorts of candy ass love poetry about our lives together, and I would not, could not stay locked down here. Might as well be wearing a tracking bracelet.”

            Dave was a little melodramatic. John didn’t mind curfew, or having to leave notes to tell Mom and Dad where he was going to be. It let him know that they cared, and as long as he didn’t write ‘out drinking paint thinner and jumping off cliffs brb’ they didn’t seem to mind. Dad was probably just glad John was spending more and more time off the computer.

            “You could come hang out more often, though. Like when your bro is away.”

            For a few seconds, Dave thought about that. Or, well, he definitely thought; John wasn’t going to swear he knew about what.

            “Hey,” Dave said, “you want to learn how to make bleach bombs?”

            John was a fourteen year old boy. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

\---

            It was pretty hard for John to get all of his favorite people into the same room. Well, okay, really it mostly involved failing to tell Dave that anyone else would be coming over that night, and begging Rose not to go anywhere. In retrospect, John felt that maybe he should have predicted how Dave would react to being roped into a D&D game.

            “Nah, man, step off. I’m drawing my character.” Dave was ‘drawing’ on printer paper, which was always a bad sign. The crayons were worse, since John didn’t even know where he’d found them. “Go snort some more Mountain Dew.”

            John was glad that he’d held off inviting any of his school friends but Dot over for this particular experiment, because a couple of the guys would take Dave way too seriously. The day you started taking anything Dave said to heart was the start of your slow but inevitable downfall, and John had that statement Rose signed and sealed.

            “You can’t snort Mountain Dew,” said Dot, who was a fountain of wisdom, “it burns.”

            “I know you can’t tell, but I am side eyeing you so hard right now,” Dave told her.

            “We got Lawrence to try it for three dollars and fifty cents. You also shouldn’t snort lemon juice, by the way.”

            Dave nodded approvingly. “Ice cold.”

            It was good that they were bonding! Even if it was over Dot’s previously unrevealed kind of evil side, which John didn’t mind anymore than he had minded being BFFs with Vriska. Everyone had a little bit of sinister tucked away inside of them, and yay, because Dot’s involved sadistic dares instead of sadistic murders! John hoped that everyone considered this a step up in his taste in women.

            “What kind of character are you rolling?”

            “Gnome barbarian.” Dave smirked and revealed his drawing with a flourish, and it was a beautiful disaster to rival any comic he’d drawn. A beautiful disaster with candy corn horns. “Her name is Terezi.”

            Jade failed to stifle a snort.

            “This is why you got bitten,” said Rose.

            “Fuck that, this is a tribute. She’d know it was a thing of beauty. ‘Sides, she only bit me ‘cause I kicked her, ‘cause she licked my eye.”

            “Licked your eye?” Dot echoed, her nose at maximum wrinkle.

            Dave looked almost nostalgic, as much as Dave looked anything. “Freaky chick.”

            John wondered if there were anyone at school like Terezi, for Dave to be friends with. Dave needed someone who wouldn’t take his bullshit. John wasn’t in the habit of taking it, and neither were Jade and Rose, but they failed to give it back to him. Dave and Terezi had been engaged in a game of absurdity chicken, and John always backed down way too quickly. He had stared into the abyss, and the abyss had been drawn in MS Paint. Terezi had crossed lines that made Dave shut up.

            Maybe they could hold auditions for crazy blind girls.

\---

            John came to the painful realization that there were just some things he couldn’t ask his father about, the ones about Girls and Kissing and Stuff that health class had left kind of iffy. John knew he was supposed to be able to asked his Dad about anything, anything in any universe, but every time he even though about that conversation his brain tried to flee over the border.

            He couldn’t ask Rose, because her fanfiction was starting to take on a uniquely vampiric slant and that was kind of freaking John out. Jade probably knew less than John did. All that left was Dave Strider, who was so, so damn cool that he absolutely had to know about this stuff. Dave was a good guy, he wouldn’t let John just flail around in the dark, holding Dot’s hand and kind of kissing her cheek and not entirely sure where to go from there.

            It was hard to shake the feeling that this was stuff a freshman in highschool should have figured out already. He was only a couple months younger than his friends, the gap couldn’t be that huge, could it? And, really, he knew what the internet was. He’d seen porn. He also had the sort of vague notion that porn was about as realistic as hitching a car to a back of an airplane and taking it for a joyride while singing Sweet Home Alabama with a convicted cross dresser. John didn’t want to take porn as a step-by-step guide.

            Steadfastly ignoring all the creepy posters that Bro passed off as interior decorating, and tried to find a way to phrase this question that it would make it seem well. Not stupid. He couldn’t have Dave losing faith in him as a leader, or as a human being, for that matter.

            In the end, he sort of just blurted out, “how do you get to second base?” without taking his eyes off the television.

            He wasn’t even sure what second base was, exactly. He’d heard a couple definitions, and they ranged from everyone being nicely clothed to pants uncomfortably far away from anyone who should be wearing them.

            “Trip the asshole on first.”

            “With _girls._ ”

            “More than one of them? Holy shit, way to reach for the stars.”

            With Dave, like with math class, it was important to define parameters. “With Dot.”

            “Be Legolas.”

            Someone chuckled, and it took John a heart stopping moment to realize that it hadn’t been one of the creepy marionettes. Worse, it was Bro, ninjaing in behind them from places unknown. He vaulted over the back of the couch, landing neatly in between John and Dave, and grabbed Dave in a headlock. John watched in silent horror as Dave was shoved up his brother’s armpit and noogied relentlessly until Dave cried uncle. Bro let his brother up for air, then turned to John with a smirk. John readied himself for strife.

            “What you asking Dave about girls for?” Bro drawled. “Everything he knows about tit the internet told him.”

            Dave gave up trying to make his hair lay flat again. “Yeah, ‘cause I can’t be inviting chicks over here. They’re all like, Dave your bro is such a mysterious guy, what’s he up to in there, and then I have to say, no girls, no, do not look upon the inner sanctum, and then they lose their eyes man, their sight and their sanity. I can’t deal with that no more, it’s enough to break a man.”

            “Weak, man.” Bro shook his head. “But Egbert’s scored? Way to go, kid. I’m glad one of you had it in you. Anything you need to know, I am your fountain of wisdom.”

            “John don’t wanna hear about your 90 year old internet boyfriend.”

            Bro cuffed Dave upside his head. “What you think I was doing all those times I shelled out for a babysitter, bro?”

            John listened to them bicker. He supposed there were worse people to ask, like, now that he thought about it, Dave. Bro was pretty young, surely young enough to remember the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. He wouldn’t hold a little ignorance against John. (Especially not when Dave was right there, being such an easy, familiar target.)

            “How do you get to second base?” John asked again, and didn’t feel any less stupid about it.

            Bro spread his arms out over the back of the couch. “Go with the flow, respect your lady. She don’t like what you’re doing, stop, back up. Just get her some place relaxing, make her feel comfortable, see what happens. Can’t push this shit, Egbert.”

            That was actually…pretty good advice. Excellent advice, John realized, and not even vaguely creepy. It was much better than the puppets.

            “Thanks.”

            “Anytime. Hey, she got any friends you can hook Dave up with? He don’t hit puberty soon I’m gonna start gettin’ worried.”

            Dave punched Bro on the shoulder, and John had to draw his legs up when they tumbled off the sofa to have a hair pulling, elbows and knees, no cool ninja techniques whatsoever wrestling match on the floor.

\---

 

            A few weeks later, at lunchtime, John very solemnly offered Dave a cupcake. John always ate lunch with Dave. It just seemed like a brotherly thing to do. Dave also seemed to think that ‘lunch time’ meant ‘eh, might as well just leave time.’ Bro must have kept him on a leash or something as a kid, because he had a habit of wandering off like an ADD kindergartner at the zoo. Take Dave to the Wal*Mart, and next think you know he’s two doors down at the ice cream shop scamming freebies.

            “What’s this for?”

            “I need your help.”

            “Man, this better not be about girls again.”

            In retrospect, even though Bro had been pretty cool about it, maybe John shouldn’t have gone to Dave about that. Rose had said he was, you know, a homosexual and all. John still didn’t know if she was being sarcastic about that or not, but he vowed not to broach any sort of girls or boys or kissing sorts of subjects with Dave from now. Just in case.

            “No, no. I need your help because I –“ Dramatic Pause “I am going to win the science fair.”

            “The what now?”

            “The science fair.” No lightbulb went off in Dave’s head. “You know, the thing they’ve been putting up flyers about for like months? It’s a competition. Of _science._ ”

            “I hate to crush your hopes and dreams into powder, snort it up into the cynical void of no return, but if any science bullshit goes down here Jade is going to be top dog. She will pack up all you little bitches, send you crying to your mom, dad, or genderless custodial crab.”

            “Well uh.” John chewed on his straw. “Jade’s not allowed to enter. The teachers said it would be unfair. They’re letting her submit her research to a local university instead.”

            “You know that’s why that girl ain’t got no brain cells left for real life, right?”

            “Jade’s got lots of brain cells for lots of things!”

            So she sometimes wandered into traffic. She was getting _much_ better, and could really blame her for not knowing those newfangled crosswalks and their green means go, red means stop? They didn’t have traffic in uninhabited islands in the middle of the Pacific, _duh._

            “Whatever, dude. How do you plan on getting your science on?”

            John bounced a little in his seat. “I’m going to build a flying machine!”

            “Congratulations, I stand baffled before you. Dave Strider has no words left, ‘cause your stupidity took them all away.”

            “I miss flying. It was cool.”

            John missed flying, missed doing the windy thing, missed joy riding half a mile above Skaia with a strange little man at the horn. It wasn’t something he talked about often, because for some reason Rose and Dave were keen to leave behind the whole Shit Son, The Apocalypse thing; especially since, as they kept pointing out, John had died a couple of times. Still, sometimes he snuck into Jade’s room, or she snuck into his, and they made a tent with the bed covers and stayed up all night remembering.

            “I’d say I miss time traveling but that actually started to suck balls after awhile.”

            “I promise not to build a time machine. But if the Doctor comes for me I must go with him.” Not any of the skinny, pretty sort of Doctor Whos, though. Oh no, it would be gruff, balding, leather jacket wearing Doctor for John or no Doctor at all. “…oh man what if they cast Nicholas Cage next.”

            “I am way past the point of apologizing for not listening to you babble.”

            “Come on,” John wheedled. “It’s mostly done already! I wanted it to be a surprise. All you have to do is observe and take notes.”

            “Mostly done? Yeah, and I’m a unicorn. Where the fuck have you been hiding a flying machine?”

            John grinned, because he was being very, very clever. “On the roof!”

            “So. You want me to watch you jump off the roof and take notes about it?”

            “Yes.”

            “Shit, I’m in. Let’s do this thing.”

-

            John had constructed his flying machine based mostly off of video games, diagrams on the internet, hope, and duct tape. Lots and lots of duct tape. To his experienced eye, it looked structurally sound. The wind was up today, steady and strong, blowing north by northeast. If John jumped just right, he was sure he could get some good air and then coast to a safe stop in the football field. He had it all worked out.

            He also had a helmet, because his father hadn’t raised a fool.

            Dave did not look like he was taking his clipboard holding and note taking duties very seriously, but all John needed was some written observations to glue to his poster board. He’d type up his own report himself, obviously, about the wonders of flight and who needed hang gliders when you had a three story building and some duct tape?

            John harnessed himself up, strapped safely into the flying machine. Seatbelts were always important. He backed up to the opposite edge of the roof, spread his tarp-and-tape wings, and gave himself a running start. He hoped Dave was taking notes about how majestic this was all looking.

            The door to the roof slammed open. Someone screamed, “Mr. Egbert!”

            John tripped over the lip of the roof, tumbled head over heels, and ‘pchooooo’d sadly all the way down to the bush that broke his fall.

            The bush.

            The flying machine.

            And also his leg.

\---

            John woke up in the hospital, with someone holding his hand. Since it was Jade, his fingers were a little numb. He pried his fingers out of her grasp.

            Jade gasped, threw her arms around him and called him a lot of really uncalled for names that he had no interest in repeating, especially not in a _hospital_ of all places. There were terminally ill children present!

            “It was all for science,” he assured her, patting her back. “Why doesn’t my leg hurt?”

            It looked like it should hurt, with the cast on it and all. Someone had stepped up and represented for John Egbert, because his cast was blue.

            Jade sniffled, wiped her nose on the hospital sheets. “They gave you something for it, you stupendous dumbass.”

            “I hope Dave took good notes on my maiden flight.”

            Jade hit him, and _that_ hurt. Good for nothing painkillers.

            “You are in so much trouble. Everyone is blaming Dave but I knew, _I knew_ , this had John Egbert written all over it in big, stupid letters!”

            “Why would Dave ask me to jump off the roof?”

            “He wouldn’t! Because he’s not an idiot like you! But somebody saw you up on the roof, and when Mr. Anders ran up there well, you were the one _leaping to your death!”_

            “I’m not dead!” John held up his arms, waved them around a bit for not dead emphasis. “My leg’s not even dead, it’s just a little. Distracted. Incapacitated. It will take its purple heart and then charge valiantly back onto the battle field!”

            Jade hit him again. “No it won’t!”

            John rubbed his arm, which was going to need a cast too if she didn’t stop. “Where are Mom and Dad?”

            “Dad’s down in the cafeteria getting us something to eat. Mom is convincing the school not to expel Dave, who is grounded until you wake up and tell he didn’t tell you to jump off the roof!”

            “I’m awake! I’m awake! Forms will be signed, in triplicate!”

            It was a good sign when Jade flicked him on the forehead instead of pummeling him some more. She’d forgiven him his trespasses.

            “If you’d wanted help with a flying machine, dummy,” she said, “all you had to do was ask me.”

\---

            The principal, Mr. Kirkpatrick, was an old guy whose office smelled, well, like old guy, but John had never had problems with him. If you just stayed out of trouble, the only reason smelly old principals would talk to you was…well, when Dave got into fights with kids.

            John hobbled over on his crutches and sat in one of the faded leather chairs in front of Mr. Kirkpatrick’s desk. Maybe he looked real heroically torn up and pathetic, so the principal would have to listen to him.

            “Describe the incident to me,” said Mr. Kirkpatrick, folding his hands on his desk all serious business about it.

            “It was my science project,” John said. He had to follow Rose’s advice: firm, but not hysterical, and never beg. “I asked Dave to take notes for me, and to be there with his phone just in case something went wrong.” Another addition by Rose. “Mr. Anders surprised me when he came onto the roof, and I tripped. Dave didn’t even take any notes, either!”

            Mr. Kirkpatrick made one of those indecipherable adult noises. “John, I know you’re close to Mr. Strider, and I find your willingness to make friends and your good attitude both very admirable traits, but a young man must also learn to practice some discretion.”

            “Dave is family.” And that was the end of that, really.

            John didn’t mean, oh, we’re sort of crossways reality related but not biologically and I’m like his ecto-dad and our kind of parents (well Dad’s really technically my half-brother) are married family, either. He meant that Dave Strider had saved his life, and he had saved Dave Strider’s, and they’d gallivanted across the Medium together, and you just got close to somebody that way. They were tight like Sam and Frodo, and Frodo didn’t throw Sam under the bus because Sam had watched him almost fall into Mount Doom that one time.

            “I do realize that certain circumstances make him unavoidable, as your step-cousin, but don’t you think he’s having a negative impact on your behavior?”

            “I just wanted my science fair project to be _really, really_ awesome. If I’d asked Jade to help, that would have been cheating! And science isn’t Rose’s thing. I’m pretty sure she thinks the laws of the universe are something that happens to other people.”

            “John, let me be blunt with you. Has Mr. Strider every involved you in any illegal activity, including drugs, alcohol, or petty theft?”

            The principal was crazy. It was unfortunate, and kind of sad, but when people got old their minds started going. They should probably put Mr. Kirkpatrick in a home, park his wheelchair right next to a sunny window and have a nurse read him inoffensive stories.

            “No! I mean, come on. Dave’s bro is pretty straight edge, without all the crazy parts of being straight edge.” Mostly because Dave’s bro got all his crazy from other things. “There’s not even beer in their fridge, how would we get alcohol? And drugs? What drugs?”

            Dave had sold John oregano once, when they were twelve, but that had been more of a life lesson and Dave needing fifteen bucks than any hardcore drug deal. John was a little surprised the US postal system hadn’t been more upset about that.

            “Mr. Strider is a troubled young man…”

            “So, what, he’s automatically going to serve five to ten for car jacking and crack?” Rose hadn’t thought to warn him about sarcasm. “I know Dave’s a little weird and I know he doesn’t get along with most people, but he’s my _best friend_ , and he was helping me out, so if you try to expel him or something my Mom is going to sue your pants off. You won’t have any pants left, because we will give them all to Dave!”

            And he would wear them, too. Ironically.

            Mr. Kirkpatrick let John go back to class.

\---

            Dot was fussing over John, which was one really great perk of having a broken leg. There was nothing like a courageous injury to make a girl swoon. Well, she hadn’t really swooned. She’d sort of called him an idiot in kinder terms than Jade had used, but then she’d settled down to the fussing. She’d told John there was no undoing his stupidity, so now they just had to deal with it.

            She was such a sweet girl.

            They sat on the couch watching a Lifetime Original Movie (so touching, so sweet), their fingers entwined between them. John didn’t even care that their palms were getting sweaty. Dot scooted over, pressing their legs together, then sort of tilted her head up and then they were making out.

\---

            Rose had started locking her door, and John had to pound on it for like three minutes before she let him into her bedroom. It was really hard for him to bounce on his cast and crutches, but boy howdy did he try.

            “Did you see Dot off to her parent’s car at a reasonable hour?”

            John’s grin threatened to split his face. “Today I touched a boob! I mean, through clothes, but a boob!”

            Rose didn’t look up from her laptop screen. “Congratulations. I trust the act was enjoyable and consensual for all.”

            “Of course it was.”

            “Would you like a sticker? A certificate of completion?”

            John pouted. “If anyone else were home, I’d tell them.”

            “I’d hold off on that. It’s not polite to kiss and tell, John.”

            “You do it all the time.”

            “Poetry is a different matter entirely.”

            John didn’t care that Rose was dismissive of his milestone on the way to glorious adulthood. Maybe she’d touched like a million boobs, but he was monogamous and didn’t have fifty-two different relationships a week.

            “Was that second base?” he asked her.

            She kicked him out.


	4. Dave, Smooth Motherfucker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of this chapter was hand written in a notebook, since my computer has decided that it doesn't like to accept electricity as a thing. Other than that, I'm just slow! I think this chapter may win the award for the fuck word.

Without his hat and gloves, Bro looked halfway to respectable. He flirted with the security lady while she was making his nametag, and wore Richard Strider stickied to his chest with ironic swagger. Dave would have appreciated the artistry of it more if this whole trip weren’t certified bullshit, but at times like these it was best to follow Bro’s lead. Dave was even wearing his whole school uniform, tie and all. The tie was brand spank new, because damned if he knew where the last one had ended up; he might have fed it to Bec.

            Bro shook Mr. Kirkpatrick’s hand and introduced himself to the school social worker (some lady who had too many Zs in her last name for Dave to bother) exactly like a dude who didn’t make fetish porn for a living. They knew not what puppets lurked beneath. Their ignorance would have made Dave smile, if smiling weren’t for losers and John.

            “Sorry about the sunglasses,” Bro said, drawl set to maximum insincere flatter. He tipped his shades down. “I’m afraid it’s genetic.”

            Dave hated it when Bro talked all formal and polite. It usually meant he was trying not to get arrested, or evicted, or kidnapped by one of his website regulars. Formality was Strider Def Con One.

            “Oh, it’s no problem.” The social worker giggled, adjusted her bun.

            She was like a million years old; Dave hoped to Hell that Bro’s new ‘internet girlfriend’ would keep him from tapping Zs with anymore flirt.

            Mr. Kirkpatrick cleared his throat. “Please, have a seat.”

            Bro didn’t slouch, so Dave had to convince his shoulders and spine to walk the straight and narrow. They were fucking baffled at the sudden demand. For a minute, everybody stared at each other all awkward. Bro wasn’t letting anything slip, forcing them to make the first move. Dave didn’t know what the hell Bro was playing at even being there; used to be he didn’t give a damn where Dave was during the school day, as long as Dave didn’t fail at playing in traffic or nothing.

            This was all Ms. Lalonde’s fault. What demonic hold did she have over Bro? The puppet thing couldn’t be worth that much blackmail. Maybe she’d given the poor bastard a lobotomy, had his brain-balls on a shelf somewhere.

            “You are aware of the trouble David’s been in…”

            “October keeps me updated.”

            The whole fucking month? Dave’s calm didn’t crack, but only because Kirkpatrick and the social worker didn’t seem to think that there was anything wrong with Bro coercing the calendar into spy duties. The dots connected themselves, straight to Ms. Lalonde’s pretentious as fuck first name. Rose had gotten luck being a flower, looked like, instead of ending up saddled with something truly god awful like Saturday February Springtime.

            “We’ve given him multiple chances.”

            A whole fucking plethora, and Dave hadn’t asked for any of them. Their bullshit stank suspiciously like pity, and he wasn’t anybody’s poor relation. Especially not _October’s._ Besides, everybody with brains knew you just had to give up on John not doing stupid shit, even if he was about to jump off the roof; Terezi had proved that with gusto. Dave was used to running clean up crew on Hurricane Egbert, taking the trouble.

            “He didn’t push Dave off the roof,” said Bro, all calm and reasonable. “He knows better.”

            All roof exits were to be conducted on the proper stairways.

            “Be that as it may, there’s still the fighting.”

            “We’ve talked about it. It’ll stop.”

            Bro was a stone faced liar. No such discussion existed, and it never would. Dave nodded along, trying to look contrite before realizing that he had no idea what in the hell ‘contrite’ looked like. He settled for a less convincing ‘I ain’t doing nothing.’

            “We’d like to address the deeper issue,” Zs said.

            Dave opened his mouth before he really thought about it. “Having to wear a sweater vest just fills me with volcanic rage.”

            Bro put a hand on his shoulder: stop smarting off to the pigs, kid.

            “It’s been a big adjustment.”

            “Did you have many friends in Houston, Dave?” Zs asked.

            “I was homecoming queen. Bitches were shanking each other to be on my court.”

            “Language,” said Bro.

            Kirkpatrick and Zs probably thought that was a warning, but Dave knew his brother’s moods. Bro was laughing it up.

            “This is exactly the sort of behavior-“

            Zs put up a hand, cut Kirkpatrick off. Dave almost decided he liked her. Then she had to go and ruin it by talking.

            “I think it would be best if Dave channeled more of his energy into fruitful endeavors. I hear he’s quite the artist.”

            Bro smirked just a fraction. “That’s genetic, too.”

            “I think, for a student with aggression issues, sports are out of the question.”

            Dave would show her aggression issues if she didn’t stop talking about him like he wasn’t there. Like he wanted to get all sweaty with a bunch of butt slapping jocks in the first place.

            “He could join the band,” Bro suggested, enjoying himself at the expense of Dave’s ego. What else was new?

            Zs was nodding all helpfully. “There’s also the chorus, or the drama club is looking for new tech crew and set designers.”

            Dave knew he wasn’t getting out of this trap until he sold his soul or gnawed his own leg off. “That last one is just wearing black and painting, right?”

            “With opportunities for more responsibility!”

            Or, flipways, opportunities to do fuck all, with headphones on. Nobody noticed if backstage disappeared, right?

            “I’ll do that one.”

            They signed him up, then and there. Bro kept up the responsible parent act until they were in the car. He leaned over the steering wheel and laughed long and low.

            “Have fun bein’ a theatre queer.”

            Dave punched him. Hard.

\---

            One thing Ms. Lalonde hadn’t bullied Bro into learning was how to do groceries. Jade, who had taken to Mr. Egbert’s home cooking like a frat boy to cocaine, considered this a crime against everything good and right in the world. She’d taken up the solemn duty of Getting Dave Fed, and at least twice a week he found himself collared and hauled onto her school bus.

            “I’m gonna get fat,” he told her. “You’ll have to find some weirdo feeder to love me.”

            “If John has survived this long without giving in to the specter of morbid obesity, I assume the rest of us will be fine as well.“ Rose was like an optimist if you reached down their throat and yanked them inside out.

            “It’s only really insane on birthdays,” John muttered.

            Dave couldn’t work out why John got all squirming embarrassed about his dad’s baking, like Mr. Egbert did sparkly cross stitch throw pillows of furries butt fucking or something. There were plenty of reasons why Mr. Egbert was a tedious god damned kill joy, but cookies were not among them.

            Jade and John got into a shrieking, giggling poke fight over the cake’s honor. John was very blatantly cheating with the extended reach his crutches gave him. Rose just stared at Dave, trying to dig out dripping handfuls of his soul.

            “You had a meeting with Kirkpatrick this morning.”

            “My ass is on strict probation.” Dave shrugged, the deal being not big at all, in fact infinitesimal. “The lady with the psych degree thinks I need anger management. I told her I’m cooler than a polar bear’s tits, but she wasn’t picking up what I was putting down.”

            “Perhaps because you were putting down complete bullshit, and they did not wish to get their fingers dirty. They must have cut you a deal of some kind, however.”

            “Yeah. After school activity, nice and wholesome. I gotta tech for the drama nerds, but if I’m not careful I could blow some minds right off the stage.”

            “Really?” John leaned over the aisle. “It’s too bad about my leg, because I’ve been thinking about acting. I want to be as good as Cage and Travolta in Face Off, when they both play as Archer and Troy. That was really –“

            “Egbert,” Dave interrupted. “I am warning you right here, right now, that if I ever hear you or Nicholas Cage trying to be southern ever again, I am taking you out back behind the barn and putting you out of everyone’s misery. With a shovel.”

             “Ha! We don’t even have a barn. There would be witnesses!”

            “We do have a shovel, though.” Jade was the very spirit of help and cooperation.

            “I’ll haunt you,” John said. “Ghosts run in my family.”

            “Heehee,” Rose deadpanned.

            Dave just knew he was going to wake up some night with her standing over his bed, fucking grinning.

\---

            His first drama meeting was on Friday, just to be even more of a pain in his ass. Dave skipped last period (math, who in the hell ever used geometry in real life, anyway?) and sat slouched in the front row of fancy auditorium seats. He pulled his headphones on and played a remix he’d been working on; it’d been driving him nuts, the beats never quite in the right synch. He would have asked Bro about it, but Bro was getting the silent treatment for being such a douche.

            The last bell rang as Dave was scribbling notes about rhythm on the back of his hand. The damn bell was always one minute, seventeen seconds late. Other students filtered in and took seats, chattering below the level of Dave’s music.

            The faculty advisor, some dumpy lady wearing a skirt that screamed burned out pothead chic, stood in front of him with her hands on her hips. Dave could just barely hear her ask for his attention; he cranked up the volume. She frowned at him and mimed taking off headphones. Dave cocked his head to the side, all coy and puzzled.

            When she reached forward to pull them off his head, he let her. It wasn’t very dignified, and it knocked his shades half off his face, but he had to be sly here, pick his battles. He turned off his iPod.

            “Hello, David.” She smiled like the weed had killed a couple dozen brain cells. “My name is Mrs. Street.”

            “Yo. Mine’s Dave, by the way.”

            “It’s lovely that you’ve decided to join our little family.” She ratcheted that smile up to a beam. “But you’re going to work and work hard. I don’t tolerate slacking off, or wasting the time and effort of your peers. If I feel that you’re not trying your very hardest, I’ll go straight to Mr. Kirkpatrick and tell him that this just isn’t working out. Understand?”

            In one of the rows behind him, someone coughed uncomfortably. Dave decided to take a page out of Bro’s book, at least until he could escape.

            “Yes ma’am.”

\---

            Dave got home paint splattered and exhausted. The infernal Mrs. Street had told him that he could wear his headphones as long as he worked, which was infinitely better than listening to _drama kids_ gossiping. They were more insipid than Tavros and the fish girl combined.

            He still had no idea what play they were planning on, though he’d painted the fuck out of half of a castle. Some kids had tried to introduce themselves but Dave’s practice ice cold shoulder had kept all annoyances at bay. Sure, Dave could have fucked with them a little, but for once he just wanted to get on with his god damned life.

            Bro was in the kitchen boiling water and staring intently at a box of Hamburger Helper. It was the most freakishly domestic thing Dave had ever seen, and he felt a little bit like he’d just walked in on his brother whacking it off to an oven mitt.

            “It ain’t my birthday.”

            Bro grunted, pulled a flavor packet out of the box and shook it like he expected pearls to come pouring out.

            “Who died?” Dave asked.

            “Nobody. Check the freezer, see if we got meat.”

            “I got meat. I don’t know about you, though.”

            Bro casually flipped him off, but was more concerned with the mysteries of macaroni than a battle of burns. Dave dodged the shit falling out of the freezer and stuck his head in; there was, miraculously, a tube of freezer burnt ground beef way in the back behind some knives and a puppet that Dave could only assume was being punished.

            Bro unwrapped the meat and plunked it down in a frying pan on high. Dave watched the edges melt.

            “It’s like a fucking shrine to the god of limp dicks.”

            Bro poked at it with a fork. “That’s why we gotta destroy it.”

            “You know what would be ironic? If you knew how to fucking cook.”

            “Do I gotta institute a swear jar?”

            “God damn it, Bro, what you gotta do is stop talking to those people. They’re worms up in your mind, chewin’ at your gray matter. Soon you’re gonna be droolin’ in a corner, then where will me and Cal be?”

            Bro took a knife – an actual kitchen knife – out of the drawer and hacked the frozen meat dick into smaller pieces. It was still mostly ice when he dumped the flavoring on.

            “Cal would pimp you out for cash,” he finally answered.

            Dave knew exactly what was going to wake him up screaming that night. “Other way round, dude.”

            Bro strained the macaroni, slopped it all together on paper plates. They ate with plastic take out forks, leaning against the kitchen counter.

            “Kid, we gotta talk serious for a sec.”

            “You got breast cancer?”

            Bro waved his fork. Meat slid off it to plop on the tile. “You’re a morbid little shit today, ain’t you? Look, little bro, on the level, out in the open, this lady I've been seeing is the real deal.” He took his shades off, looked Dave honest to Jegus right in the face. “I want you to meet her.”

            “I never met your girlfriends before.”

            Bro shrugged. “Before the game went down, didn’t matter. We got time now. I plan on usin’ mine.”

            “What if I unleash her inner pedo and she tries to touch me in my swimsuit area?”

            “You know I’d kill her.”

            Dave’s version of stranger danger had been built around the core concept of ‘we’ll think of an alibi after they’re dead.’

            “Yeah, sure. I’ll meet your old lady.”

            “Cool. Eat your slop, it’s good for you. Got vitamins, the box said so.”

\---

            Because God hated him, Dave’s headphones broke before the next drama club meeting. Sure, he’d been holding them together with duct tape and hope, but he liked the feel and balance of them. The headphones were traitors, and would be hanged at dawn without a trial, just like Terezi had taught him. He shoved them in his bag and braced himself to remain the cool kid under the scrutiny of a dozen overeager drama nerds.

            It turned out that most of the drama nerds wanted nothing to do with Dave Strider’s infinite chill. He was damn proud of how far reaching his brush off was, an echo of not giving shit through the ages. They left him alone to paint his castle.

            “Looking pretty good.” Except that one.

            “Man, I know I am, but pay attention to the artwork.” Belatedly, Dave realized he should stop saying shit like that to guys if he wanted Rose to stop being weird.

            “Rumor is you have anger management problems.”

            The guy sat down cross legged across from Dave. Dave didn’t recognize him, but Dave wasn’t so good at names and faces. This face had brown eyes, boyband hair, and a slightly crooked nose.

            “I killed a man in Reno just to rifle through his pockets and steal all his change.”

            Undeterred, the guy said, “My name’s Cole.”

            “And then I fed his corpse to my lizard consorts, garnished with onions.”

            “Christ, you really are related to Rose.”

            “Hey, you watch your mouth.”

            “So why are you such a dick all the time, anyway?”

            Cole didn’t sound angry, didn’t look upset either. He was looking at Dave the way Jade looked at small, furry creatures right before she shot them.

            “Well, my parents died in a car crash, I was raised in neglect, and now I’m the only one who can defeat the Dark Lord.” Dave spread his hands. “It’s a mother fucking burden.”

            “Harry Potter’s parents didn’t actually die in a car crash.”

            Dave shrugged. “Reading’s for girls.”

            “And only Death Eaters called him the Dark Lord.”

            This was worse than the time Tavros had described his role playing character. Dave tilted his sunglasses down so that Cole could appreciate how hard he was being stared at.

            “Look, man, it’s cute that you have a crush on me, and if you really want to blow me I’ll throw you a bone, but you gotta make it quick and I’m not touching your ass.”

            “Whoa, your eyes are red.”

            Dave shoved his sunglasses back up, thoroughly reminded why he didn’t make expressions at people.

            “Give the man a prize.”

            Cole at least looked ashamed of his own stupidity. “Sorry. My bad.”

            “Just for that, you better swallow.”

            “Sorry freshie, I don’t give head to twelve year olds. Good work on the landscapes, try not to be such a raging asshole, all right?” Cole pushed himself up.

            “I’m fifteen in December, dickbag.” It wasn’t the cleverest retort he’d ever spun up.

            Cole gave Dave a thumbs up over his shoulder as he walked away.

\---

            After that, Cole went ahead and decided that he and Dave were Best Friends Forever. Dave suspected that Zs and Mrs. Street had put him up to it, because he was really fucking annoying about the whole thing.

            On Wednesday, he sat with Dave and John at lunch. It was insufferable.

            “Dave!” John exclaimed. “You have a friend!”

            The worse part about hanging out with John was that, sometimes, Dave couldn’t quite pick apart his natural bullshit from his sarcasm.

            “I’m not fucking special ed, Egbert, I can make friends. However, had I decided to descend and touch some mortals with my golden fingers of cool, it wouldn’t be this douchebag.”

            “We’re in drama club together,” Cole explained to John, as if Dave hadn’t spoken.

            “I hope he hasn’t been an asshole.”

            “Nah. Did he really push you off the roof?”

            John waved a hand. “Never. I jumped! You should sign my cast, it’s going to stick around for awhile. I had _multiple_ factures.”

            “Hardcore.”

            “My girlfriend says I’m a fucking idiot.”

            Dave pushed a hand between them, snapped his fingers. “Oi. Ladies. This is the cafeteria, not a fucking coffee clatch. Save the tittering gossip for later, at the knitting circle. And Egbert, I’m telling your dad you said fuck.”

            John shrugged. “He won’t believe you.”

            Too fucking true. Dave settled for flipping John off.

            “Has he always been like this?” Cole asked.

            “Who? Dave? As long as I’ve known him,” John said. “Actually, he used to be worse. Or he pretended to be worse. It’s hard to tell over the internet.”

            Dave couldn’t help but feel that he was losing his grasp on this situation. The geeks had wrested it from his control, and were in sinister collusion with each other. Rose would have written a fanfic about it. The worst part was, John obviously meant well. It was sickening.

            “Hey, back up a second,” Cole said. “You’ve got a girlfriend?”

            John nodded with pathetic vigor. “She’s more beautiful than Liv Taylor.”

            “Huh.” Cole waved a hand between John and Dave. “Thought you two were dating.”

            John looked at Dave out of the corner of his eye, like he was afraid Dave was going to freak out or something. John had an appalling lack of faith in Dave’s resources, his wellsprings of calm motherfucker.

            “I get that a lot,” John said.

            “Wait, what?” That was still calm, still cool. “Fucking hell, Egbert, I hope you set them straight.”

            “Pun.” John fiddled nervously with his fork. “Usually I do!”

            Cole made a thoughtful noise. “You know, Dave, if you don’t want people to think you’re gay you should probably stop offering to let guys have sex with you.”

            Dave very calmly stood up from the table, leaving his tray. Let Cole and John be besties and braid each other’s hair. Dave Strider had a mother fucking castle to paint.

 


	5. John and the Miracle of Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Secret Confession: I spent a lot of time batting a chapter around in my head, coming up with 'plot' and jokes until I get a day off to sit down and write it out. As you may have guessed, days off have been in short supply lately. At the end of next month the job from hell ends and my partner and I go back to the states, so expect an upswing in productivity around August.
> 
> Secret Secret Confession: I try to keep the OCs in this fic to background importance, but there is going to be an increase in Cole's participation from here on in. The world is full of people, and the kids meet them! If this feels awkward, shoehorned, or disruptive, please tell me so. He's supposed to feel like, well, just a guy.
> 
> The rest of this fic may be done in Dave's POV. After this chapter, John has sort of said his bit. We'll see.

            John wasn’t big on thinking his clever plans all the way through. It had driven Karkat to distraction and increasingly aggravated all-caps, but after the game John hadn’t been too worried about getting himself into trouble. What was the biggest problem to worry about on Earth? Looking both ways before he crossed the street? He didn’t need Karkat yelling at him to stay put and not do anything stupid.

            Karkat probably could have told him that Dot and Jade were going to decide to be Best Friends.

            John had wanted them to get along. He wanted everyone to get along! People shouting and fighting and stabbing only lead to desperate suicide missions and a lot of dead trolls. He just wasn’t sure he wanted Jade gossiping with his girlfriend.

            This was supposed to be movie night. He was supposed to be cuddling on the couch with Dot and watching The Wickerman, maybe getting in a little smooching. Jade was supposed to be. Doing science, or crime, or something. Something else.

            “Everyone wanted to do sloppy make outs with John,” Jade was saying, very cheerful, no big deal. “Big sloppy crazy make outs, big sloppy hate make outs, big sloppy dead make outs!”

            Dot was a nice girl. She didn’t look too weirded out until that last one. “Dead?”

            Jade wrinkled her nose. “That’s why I’ll never kiss Dave again. I don’t care about shipping charts, that was. Slimy, and cold. Like resurrecting a fish.”

            John could see the gears turning in Dot’s head as she slowly came to the conclusion that she just had to treat Jade like a crazy person. It wasn’t the best solution, but it was much better than letting Jade talk long enough that she’d getting to the part about sloppy dead Rose make outs. You just didn’t tell a guy’s girlfriend that he’d once kissed his stepsister, even if the circumstances had been pretty sucky.

            “So this was some RP thing?” Dot guessed, all hopeful and no sudden movements.

            “Exactly!”

            “How could anyone hate John?” Dot reached over and grabbed John’s hand, and he liked this girl a lot.

            “He didn’t really hate me,” John assured her. “He just really wanted to hate me so that he could have…an epic rival.” The trolls were weird. It was hard to make them sound not-weird. “He watched a little too much anime.”

            Dot frowned thoughtfully at him. “No offense, but you’re not really epic rival material. You’re too nice.”

            John nodded. “That’s exactly what he wanted to hate.”

            “KK was lonely, I think,” said Jade. “But his best friend’s a vampire now, so they’re going to be okay!”

            “Well,” Dot said. Paused a long second to gather herself. “Just goes to show that there’s somebody out there for everyone.”

            Jade beamed. “And she’ll keep him snappily dressed, which is very important.”

\---

            Every so often, Dave showed up at their door with a backpack full of clothes and a really, really badly spelled note from Bro. John didn’t know ‘pleez’ was supposed to be an ironic deconstruction of the necessity of manners, or if Bro really never had gone to first grade. Usually, Dave didn’t show up at three in the morning, but there was always a first time for everything. It was early October, getting fucking cold out, but there was Dave in flip flops, sweatpants, and a t-shirt.

            Dave had leaned on the doorbell until he’d woken up everyone in the house, even though John was _sure_ Dave could have ninja’d his way into the guestroom without disturbing so much as a Bec. Everything Dave did was cool, but this was very low on the cool scale. They had school in the morning.

            “He sent you out in your pajamas?” Dad asked.

            “Gotta be ready for anything.”

            Dave made pajamas look like he was wearing them on purpose, because he was simply too awesome to be caught dead in normal everybody clothes. Dad looked like he was ready to lead a war campaign, or at least a pretty complicated bake sale, in his bathrobe. John figured he looked like a dork, and didn’t care; it was _three in the morning._

Mom and the girls had gone back to bed, Mom insisting that this was a Man Problem. Other Man Problems included doing the dishes and talking to telemarketers.

            Dad frowned. “I’m going to have to have a talk with that boy.”

            “Good fu- Good luck.”

            “Where’s he gone?”

            Dave shrugged. “He wants me to meet his old lady, but I guess he forgot to mention to her that he has a kid hanging around. Your wife decided our ‘cover story’ – ” Dave didn’t have to make air quotes for air quotes to exist – “was me being a teenage failure of the pull out method, and that’s something you gotta prepare a lady for.”

            “What’s the pull out method?” John blurted.

            Dave and Dad turned to stare at him.

            “I’ll have a talk with this boy as well,” said Dad.

            John suddenly wanted to be very, very far away. “Right now?”

            “Later.”

            That would give him a chance to escape, at least. Or to slip some sort of amnesiac into the next batch of cupcake batter, because he had a sneaking suspicion that this talk was going to end in informational videos. He and Dave were both bundled off to bed.

\---

            John had no chance to regroup and get himself out of the inevitable. He tried to explain that it had been three in the morning, he’d been confused, yes he knew what the pull out method was. But it turned out that ‘you…pull out. Like in baking!’ had not been the correct answer. Dad actually kept him and Dave home from school, let them get dressed in comfortable clothes instead of the school uniform. John wondered if they were going to rob a bank or something.

            Rose and Jade didn’t even make a fuss about having to go to school while the boys stayed home. Jade hugged them both very tightly and Rose looked amused, like she’d never see them again but every now and then would look back and laugh about their fate.

            Dad parked them on the living room sofa.

            “This is your fault, man,” said Dave.

            John remained ever hopeful. “We can still escape. You cause a distraction.”

            “Hell no. I’m gonna watch you suffer.”

            Dad pulled a little foil packet out of his pocket and held it up. “This is a condom.”

            John might have screamed a little. He clamped his hands over his mouth and tried not to die of embarrassment. He knew what a condom was! He knew what sex was! He’d had health class in seventh grade, and he’d have it again next semester. If Dad kept talking, then John was going to be overqualified and he’d have an unfair advantage over the other students.

            “Are you all right, John?”

            John forced himself to fold his hands in his lap. “Why do you have that?”

            Dave, the fucker, laughed. John usually appreciated it when Dave cracked his calm enough to be a real boy and laugh. Right now, though, he was just being evil.

            Dad cleared his throat. “Well, between the two of us, October and I have enough children to take care of that we’re not looking to have another.”

            Married people had sex. John knew married people had sex. That did not give married people, especially not _his father_ , free rein to run around talking about having sex. Not even in hints.

            “Nnnnn,” said John.

            “The pull out method is a form of birth control in which the man removes himself before ejaculation,” Dad explained, like he’d gone to Wikipedia and looked that up and memorized it exactly.

            John died a little.

            “It’s also stupid.” Dave wasn’t helping.

            “It is not generally very effective, especially not without exact planning and careful communication. You boys are young yet, but it is never too early for you to know that it is the man’s responsibility to carry one of these.” He held up the condom again, and John hated the condom a lot. “If you plan on having sexual intercourse at all, this had better be in your pocket.”

            “Yes sir,” John squeaked out. He wasn’t going to mention any of this to Dot. Ever. Not even if they got married and had a million children and died in each other’s arms at the age of 102.

            Dad stopped, looked uncomfortable. John fidgeted. Dad didn’t look uncomfortable for anything short of the apocalypse, and even then he’d been pretty calm about everything. Something bad was coming, something much worse than just one condom. John was willing to forgive the condom, embrace its place in his destiny, if this talked just ended now.

            Dad forged on ahead in brave and manly fashion. “Now, John. I know you have a girlfriend. But human sexuality isn’t something that’s set in stone, and should you ever. Well. I feel that, as a father, it is important that I cover all the bases.”

            John didn’t think they had the same sort of bases in their lives. He didn’t think this talk was going in a breast direction.

            Dave was digging his fingers into the couch so hard the leather creaked. “We don’t need to hear about no faggy stuff.”

            “You will not use that sort of language in my house,” Dad told him, for the thousandth time. “If you – if _either_ of you – find yourself with a boyfriend, there will be no judgment from me or October. You can hardly outdo Rose, in any case. And while I am not aware of the…mechanics, if you find yourself confused I am sure I can find you. A pamphlet.”

            “Did Rose get a pamphlet?” Dave’s voice was tight and mean.

            “October handled this with the girls, as is appropriate.”

            John wiped his sweaty palms off on his cast and decided to never mention Karkat’s crush to Dad. “Thanks, Dad. Are we done now?”

            Dad exhaled. “Yes. Since I put you boys through all of this, I’m giving you a day off. I have to get to work now, try not to jump off the roof. Your cast comes off next week, and I’d hate you to have another.”

\---

 

            Dave stared at the television, his face completely devoid of emotion. “That was fucking creepy.”

            “It wasn’t so bad.” John had mostly recovered, and in hind sight no, he wasn’t going to die. “I mean, he didn’t interrogate us or tell us we’re going to get herpes and go to Hell or anything. Did Bro ever give you the talk?”

            “Bro makes fucking fetish porn for a living. Any time he starts talking about sex, I stop listening.”

            “Good plan, I guess.”

            They played video games and avoided talking about it for the rest of the day, like the true teenage boys they were.

\---

            John’s cast came off without a hitch, though he still had an ankle brace, a crutch, and explicit instructions not to enter the science fair. That didn’t crush his hopes and dreams too thoroughly, though he would have liked the gift certificate. Maybe next year.

            Dave was hanging out with him less and less, skipping their lunch table to do mysterious Dave things god-knows-where. That wasn’t a good sign. That was a sign that pointed toward Dave engaging in reckless acts of what Mr. Kirkpatrick called hooliganism. If Dave was going to be a hooligan, it was downright unfair of him not to involve John. At least there was one place Dave _had_ to be.

            The play was still a month away, but the drama club had started putting the stage together. It looked impressive so far, as far as John knew anything about high school plays. The drama club at his old school had been a little bit underfunded, and they mostly made do with hopeful imagination.

            Cole was sitting cross legged at the end of the stage, flipping through a script. He looked up and smiled when he heard John thumping closer.

            “Hey, the gimp is one step closer to a full man. How’s it feel?”

            “Like I’m going to have to start going back to gym class soon.”

            Cole clapped John on the shoulder. “We all make sacrifices. You looking for Charlie Brown?”

            “Who?”

            “Dave. Because he’s always –” Cole slumped his shoulders and scowled – “you know, sulking.”

            John shook his head. “It’s not sulking. He’s just too cool to make facial expressions most of the time.” Cole didn’t look ready to buy what John was selling. “Anyway! What play are you doing?”

            “Dave didn’t tell you?”

            “I don’t think Dave knows.”

            Cole laughed. “And that’s how we know he cares. We’re doing the Scottish play, Macbeth in the flesh.”

            “Are you Macbeth?”

            “Nah.” Cole waved a hand, and the script with it. “I’m not good enough to carry the whole thing. I’m one of the dicks who gets killed off. Though, Shakespeare. That’s about half the cast.”

            John didn’t want to admit he had no idea who was in Macbeth other than Macbeth and some witches. He assumed Cole wasn’t playing a witch, but maybe there was a shortage of female cast members. John had learned some things in life about assumptions.

            “Where is Dave, anyway?”

            Cole made a face a shrugged. “Playing hooky. I told Mrs. Street he showed up and has been running errands, but I can’t cover his ass forever. He does know Kirkpatrick has got a bug up the butt about expelling him, right?”

            “Kind of.” The question was whether or not Dave cared, or at least cared enough not to pretend he didn’t care. “Wanna help me find him?”

            “Yeah, sure. At least if I can haul him back here then I’m not a total liar.”

            Cole was a good guy. He let John and his crutch set the pace as they explored all the little dark corners of the school. They disrupted at least two necking couples, but nobody had seen Dave. Turned out that Cole knew absolutely nothing about computers, so he also let John talk to his heart’s content about programming. He couldn’t even tell that John wasn’t any good at it.

            “You play video games?” John asked, when he’d exhausted his knowledge of stuff he could bullshit about.

            “A little bit. My hand-eye coordination isn’t exactly great, and I’m not down for the trash talking. Tried to play online once and just got pissed off.”

            “That’s why I only play co-op with Rose anymore. At least she’s creative.”

            They found Dave in the football team’s locker room, which was supposed to be locked and off limits. It smelled pretty rank, but was deserted during the school day. Dave was lounging on a bench, his new ridiculously expensive headphones over his ears. John couldn’t see his eyes behind his shades, but from the slump of his shoulders and the uncomfortable angle of his neck, Dave was probably asleep.

            Cole motioned for John to be silent, then tip-toed toward Dave. John debated telling him no, stop, bad idea. Because on one hand, it was a bad idea. On the other, it would probably be hilarious. John let nature take its course. Cole got right up in Dave’s face, slipped off Dave’s shades, then licked his pinky and stuck it in Dave’s ear.

            Dave woke up swinging. He clipped Cole a good one, then shoved him to the floor, sitting on top of him and raising a fist –

            “Dave!” John shouted, before Dave could break the nose of the only new person who had decided to like him in months.

            “You are a high-strung son of a bitch,” Cole said. “This is why they made you get a hobby, you know.”

            Dave snatched his sunglasses back and shoved them on his face. “Fuck off.”

            “Can’t until you get off me.”

            John was sure he was seeing something, something that reminded him of Rose’s weird theories and Dad’s awkward talks in the living room. Because Dave was taking a little too long to stop sitting on Cole, and that was. Strange. Dave wasn’t a touchy feely kind of guy. Not that they were cuddling or anything, Dave was just kind of glaring and lingering. But, assumptions! Maybe Dave was just trying to make a point about the thorough sitting upon that would befall anyone who tried to sneak up on him.

            Maybe if John explained the situation to Dad he could get one of those pamphlets for Dave and hide it under his pillow so that he’d never know who was responsible.

            Dave finally stood up. He didn’t offer a hand to Cole, just let him push himself up off the nasty locker room floor.

            “What do you two want?” Dave asked John, refusing to even look at Cole.

            “Uh, you’re supposed to be at drama. I thought we could hang out afterward, get ice cream or something.”

            “Fuck you, Egbert, we’re not going on a date. Why don’t you take this asshole instead?”

            “Because Jade told me this was happening, and if I bring a substitute I’ll be at her mercy?”

            Not even Dave in a mood could argue with that logic.

 


	6. Welcome to Your Social Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm a hideous liar! Finished up a job, moved back home, am now in the process of applying to NEW jobs. And trying to finish a novel, but isn't every other person on the internet these days? The proper mindset to write this fic comes and goes, but I think the spur for this chapter is pretty obvious, given the timing. :) Hope you enjoy, always sorry about the erratic update schedule.

Bro took a shower. And he did the laundry. Well, he did his laundry, because he wasn’t Dave’s fucking maid, and he’d left behind worrying about how clean Dave’s underwear was when Dave was six. But Bro had gotten dryer sheets from someone, and smelled so mountain fresh that Dave couldn’t help but be suspicious.

            “Where we going?” Dave asked, just making sure that ‘court’ wasn’t going to be involved in the answer.

            Bro shrugged, pulled on one of those flannel shirts he’d taken to wearing up here; Washington in winter was colder than Queen Victoria’s lady business. “IHOP.”

            Dave looked at the clock. It remained two in the afternoon. IHOP was a three in the morning, shit forgot to feed the kid, need twenty pancakes for a fiver sort of place.

            “What’s at IHOP? Pancake themed strippers?” Not that Dave had ever understood the whole food-sex thing. How long could you go without a shower after you’d gotten cheap maple syrup in your body hair?

            “Put clean clothes on.”

            Dave grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it up to give a whiff. Rose might bitch, but nobody else would notice. It wasn’t like Harley didn’t smell like dog all the damn time.

            “I’m good.”

            A t-shirt whapped Dave in the head at high speeds.

            “Do it or I’ll do it for you, man.” Bro’s mouth twitched just a centimeter, a grimace. “Turns out ironic negligence ain’t exactly cool with chicks. Try to look like you’re spoiled or something.”

            “Did used to have a pony.” Dave changed his shirt, throwing his old one in the vague direction of a corner of the living room. “And I go to that stick up the ass school. You’re practically father of the fucking year.”

            “Don’t tell her about the stairs, bro.”

            Dave rolled his eyes. “We’re meeting your chick, right? What about the dong puppets?”

            Bro smacked him a good one upside the head, which he could have ducked, but the man was nervous. Dave thought about ruining Bro’s booty call, spinning some sob story, but if there was one thing chicks liked to do it was call the police. ‘And then he pushed me down the stairs’ was somehow translated into lady speak as ‘oh god help call the sheriff.’

            All of the seatbelts in Bro’s car were broken, or just missing. Bro was smooth enough to avoid tickets, though Dave was better at bracing against the dashboard in high speed chases than most guys. Bro played bad 80s synth pop the whole way there, loud enough to drown out everybody else’s bass line. The singers all techno-yodeled about true love, and Dave was starting to get just a little, in a totally understandable and not-uncool way, worried about the whole thing. What if he messed up Bro’s booty call on accident? Some chicks didn’t like smooth operators, almost as much as Dave didn’t like being locked out of the damn apartment.

            There were families in the IHOP instead of drunk college kids and hookers. It was surreal. Dave scanned the restaurant for single ladies. Bro took him by the elbow, lighter than usual, and dragged him past tables full of screaming twelve year olds and about 5,000 calories worth of whipped cream per plate. Rose would have had a fit.

            Bro shoved Dave into a booth before Dave could even register who was sitting across the table, had to take a moment to get his nose out of the sugar packets and adjust his shades.

            The lady on the other side of the booth was probably Bro’s age, Dave hoped. She didn’t look seventeen or seventy or nothing. She was black, with dreads and a lip ring and tattoos from the straps of her tank-top down to her wrists.

            She held out her hand to him. Dave stared at it until Bro elbowed him in the ribs. Who the fuck shook hands anymore? Dave and this lady.

            “Shanice,” she said. “Friends call me Shane.”

            “Dave. Friends call me Bad Motherfucker Numero Uno.”

            Shane smirked. “Yeah, Rich raised you.”

            It took Dave a long minute to remember who she meant. Of course Bro’s old lady couldn’t call him _Bro._ That would have been some weird, incestuous bullshit for Rose to have a psychotherapy field day with.

            “Shane works at the tattoo parlor,” Bro said, all helpful and shit. It was creeping Dave out.

            “Bro does porn,” Dave didn’t blurt out, Dave said in a totally premeditated way.

            Shane cackled. “Baby, you brought this kid down on yourself.”

            Dave figured he could live with this. As long as he wasn’t living with it literally. No babes in the man space.

\---

            The babe came in the man space. She hung out for awhile, licking Bro at Xbox games, watching bad horror movies with them, telling Dave that if he got a tattoo in somebody’s kitchen at fourteen his arm would develop gangrene and fall off. They ordered Chinese for dinner and Bro let her steal the shrimp out of his lo-mein, in some sort of fucked up Strider chivalry. Then they went into Bro’s room and shut the door, might as well have put a sock on the doorknob. And, sure, her and Bro were trying to be quiet about it, which was freakishly polite, but apartment walls were thin. Headphones weren’t cutting it.

            One a.m. was a beautiful time for a walk. Dave pulled on his hoodie, left a note drawn on the counter in washable marker. Bro would be able to decipher AT DAWN, CALL 911.

            Their city wasn’t huge, and didn’t have much of a downtown, but it had sidewalks that it liked to keep in repair, and trees that it liked to plant. The air was suspiciously breathable. Dave considered climbing up to the rooftops, but he didn’t have the layouts memorized yet and if he fell and broke an ankle 911 would suddenly be a not very funny joke.

            Dave wandered, took some pictures with his iPhone, wished he’d fought the creepy-crawling disturbing long enough to grab his real camera. The world was cooler looking at night, even if he had to take his sunglasses off to avoid running into a telephone pole. He bought a soda and a candy bar at an all night gas station, but ended up giving the candy and ten dollars to some homeless guy in exchange for a can of beer.

            Beer tasted like piss. Dave threw the mostly full can off an overpass and ran when it smacked into someone’s windshield. Good thing his fingerprints weren’t in the system.

            He figured he was safely away from the scene of the crime when a car started following him, slow and stranger danger creepy. Dave pulled out his iPhone and made ready to make the police his new best friend. The person who called first and most hysterical was obviously the one in the right. He chanced a look over his shoulder, but there was no sticky residue on the car’s windshield. In fact, that car was kind of familiar.

            Shit. Dave slowed down, because he knew by now that running was a futile effort. The car pulled up to the curb, and Ms. Lalonde rolled down her window.

            She was all dolled up, even more than usual, with a big drippy, shiny necklace and her hair down around her shoulders. In the driver’s seat, probably by popular vote of sobriety, Mr. Egbert was wearing a tuxedo like the gigantic dork he was.

            “David,” she said, and even though her cheeks were flushed she never slurred. “It’s very, very early.”

            “I know. Shit, it is so past your bed time. You’d better hurry the fuck home, or Rose is going to cut herself a switch.”

            “Language.” Was Mr. Egbert’s favorite fucking word

            Dave spread his arms wide. “I’m outside, I can say whatever the fuck I want.”

            Ms. Lalonde ignored him. “Where’s Richard?”

            Still weird. “Back home, elbow deep in a meat taco.”

            Mr. Egbert made a spectacular face, one Dave had only seen on John before. It was a little victory, but Dave gave himself a mental fistbump.

            “Get in,” Mr. Egbert said, “we’ll take you home.”

            “Hell nah. Now that I’m gone, they’ve probably broken out the straps and the muppets and the video cameras. I open the door to that and the FBI is gonna have us all in Gitmo.”

            Ms. Lalonde sighed. It was heavy with disappointment, the failure of everything she expected from Dave. Whatever the fuck that had been, he couldn’t tell.

            “It’s two thirty in the morning. Get in the car, David.”

            Mr. Egbert had put the car into neutral, had his hand on the seatbelt buckle. He was totally prepared to thrown down. Dave had a lot of faith in his own ability to kick ass and take names, but schooling your best bro’s dad probably wasn’t good for the whole best bros thing. John could be all sensitive like that.

            Dave got in the car. He didn’t remember falling asleep in the backseat, or how he ended up in the guest room bed without his shoes on. He refused to ask. If he didn’t ask, he didn’t know, and he could still be cool.

\---

            Bro picked him up the next morning. Shane was in the passenger seat, but she apologized and gave Dave a blueberry muffin. He forgave her, because he was a gracious guy that way, and she looked away while he changed into his uniform in the backseat on the way to school. Bro even slowed down enough in the parking lot that Dave didn’t have to tuck and roll.

            Dave had gym class first thing, which was as sadistic as it was stupid. Usually he skipped it, but lately all he could remember was his bloody nose. He didn’t need Bro thinking he’d gone all soft.

            The locker room smelled like sweat and gym socks, but that was nothing to rival a bachelor’s apartment in Houston’s mid-August heat. They all filed into the gym and assembled themselves into a ragged, resentful line. For the first time, Dave took notice of who was standing next to him as they all prepared to act like Dave wasn’t the only one in the class who could do a fucking push up.

            “Stop stalking me,” he told Cole.

            Cole grinned and totally failed to touch his toes. “I’ve been here all year, Strider. Where the hell did you come from?”

            “The universe full of competent people, obviously.” Dave tucked his fingers under his sneakers without bending his knees. “How old are you, ninety? John’s fucking grandma is more flexible than you.”

            Didn’t make a difference that she had an advantage, being dead and all.

            “I’m fighting the man by refusing to make an effort.”

            “In ten years you’re gonna fight the man by dying on an elevator from a heart attack and blocking the door.”

            Cole slapped his stomach. “When my metabolism fails in a couple of years, I’ll just develop an eating disorder.”

            “I’m telling the social worker you said that, just so you have to spend two hours a week with her being all fucking concerned at you.”

            “Actor,” Cole scoffed. “No chance you’ll be more believable than me.”

            It was easier to ignore Cole when they started doing laps, mostly because he turned about as red as Dave’s eyes and could only wheeze a protest whenever Dave lapped him. Dave made sure to laugh every time, a snicker designed to take all the wind out of Cole’s already deflated sails.

            Fucking useless drama nerds.

\---

            There was a reason Dave knew exactly how many hours a week the designated Troubled Children had to spend with Social Work Z. Instead of study hall on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he had to haul himself into her office, snap on his headphones, and stare at slinkies while she waited for him to talk it out. Somedays, he told her about his life just to watch her squirm. He debated spinning her the whole story about the game, but didn’t want to spend the rest of his life wrapped up in fluffy white cotton at the Sanitarium For Kids Who Think They’re Time Travelers.

            Z must have been talking to Mrs. Street, because as soon as he flopped down on the uncomfortable, overstuffed chair, she held out a hand.

            “Headphones, please, Mr. Strider.”

            Which was how they spent forty five minutes staring at each other in total silence, while Dave composed sick rhymes in his head.

\---

            Jade caught him outside of Z’s office, threw her arms around his neck and swung them both through the hallway in circles. Dave was pretty sure that someday Jade was going to break his neck. Didn’t even matter that she’d feel bad about it afterwards. Bro would probably stuff him and string him up as a marionette. Dave had woken up from that nightmare before; he pried Jade safely away from his throat.

            Thankfully, she hadn’t said anything else about Rose’s crazy broad rumor mongering. Either Jade had let it drop, or she’d forgotten about it entirely in the wake of a scientific breakthrough, or a butterfly, or a fursuit or something.

            “Dave!” She exclaimed, because Jade’s life was full of exclamation points. “What are we doing for Halloween?”

            Shit, that was right. Fall was slamming into them with all the subtlety of Bro’s horrible plaid flannel shirts. Soon, Dave was going to have to freeze to death or shove himself into some sort of puffy parka. He was bracing himself to make friends with frostbite.

            “I was thinking of stealing John’s clothes and going as a total loser.”

            She laughed at him. “They wouldn’t fit. John’s taller than you.”

            He pressed a hand against her mouth. “Sssh. No more words. You’re ruining the god damned moment here.”

            She licked him, which unfortunately wasn’t the most disgusting thing to happen to him all week. That honor still went to the hobo beer. He jerked his hand away and wiped it off on his jeans; it was already too late to stop the Jade cooties. It had always been too late.

            “John and I want to have a party,” she said. “You have to come, and you have to dress up. And I mean in an actual costume. You can’t just wear your normal clothes and scowl all night and tell everyone you’re dressed up like irony. I will make you have fun, Strider.”

            Her smile was big, wide, buck-toothed, and impossible to argue with. Jade was an immovable object, and while Dave often considered himself quite the irresistible force, actually being one required an absolutely sincere amount of effort.

            “I’ll dress up as Bro.”

            “No.” She took his arm and started dragging him bodily to the cafeteria. “It has to cost more than twenty dollars and it has to be something you can’t just wear everyday.” She made a strange, fangirl mating call noise. “You could go as a _vampire._ ”

            “Fuck off, unless Rose is going as a fucking sugarplum fairy.”

            “A werewolf?”

            “What? Put some wolf ears on, so that you can fap to the image of Dave god damn Strider later? Boundaries, woman, develop some.”

            Jade continued talking over the top of him, “I was thinking of sewing together our God Tier outfits, actually. I saw the _cutest_ headband online the other day.”

            “No.” Dave yanked away from her. “Fuck no, nothing from the game, unless you want me to have some hardcore Nam style flashback shit, start strifing in the middle of your apple bobbing, slice open anyone dressed up like a clown.”

            “All right, all right.” She pouted. “I’m sorry. I just can’t find anything good in the store. It’s all got ‘sexy’ written before it.”

            Dave couldn’t help the convulsive shudder that accompanied any thought of that sort, but he had to play it cool. “I don’t know, we could buy one for John.”

            “Dot would appreciate that.”

            “Oh my sweet jegus, don’t even. John’s gonna be all able bodied by Halloween, I don’t need to think of those two dry humping in French maid outfits.”

            Jade’s eyes went wide. “You have an awful imagination.”

            “It is a curse and a burden.”

            Jade had a Mr. Egbert-assembled-nutritionally-approved-cake-craving-satisfying packed lunch. She followed Dave into the lunch line anyway.

            “You can invite someone to the party, if you want,” she said, while Dave was distracted by the hypnotically disgusting sight of green been casserole dripping down onto his tray.

            “I don’t think Bro’s really down with that scene. He’s got himself a girl now, they’ll probably go get drunk somewhere and end up making little oops Striders.”

            “I meant like, friends.”

            “Fuck you.”

            The lunch lady started yelling at them about language, which made him think of Mr. Egbert in an awful hairnet. He ignored the slop servant in favor of Jade’s pissy squint.

            “If you were nicer to people, you might have somebody to invite to the party.”

            “If I were nicer, I might have a bunch of useless shits to invite. Who goes to a Halloween party, anyway? Is it going to be a kegger? You’ve got to plan these things out for maximum awesome or we’re just going to sit there all night eating snickers and getting lardy.”

            Jade jabbed two fingers right into his kidney. “Shut up, Dave.”

            Which was how he ended up dropping his lunch tray, and had to share Jade’s almond butter and strawberry jelly sandwich with the crusts cut off.

\---

            The stupid play, some Shakespeare thing, was in three weeks. Dave had finished the castle, and no longer had any excuse to pop on his headphones and ignore everyone. He had to venture into the belly of the beast and ask Mrs. Street what he was supposed to waste his time on.

            The answer found him, as answers so often did, when he followed the sounds of someone swearing.

            Tucked up in an alcove above the auditorium was a sound mixer Dave could have taken apart and put back together in his sleep. It was probably circa 1992 in shitiness, and he’d owned better when he and Bro were scamming the neighbors for rice-a-roni handouts. Cole and a dark haired girl were in the process of breaking it further than it already sucked.

            Dave flash stepped over, something he tried to avoid doing in school because it made people shriek and start swinging, and then authority figures got upset. He grabbed Cole’s wrist and yanked it away before Cole could touch anymore buttons and burn down the whole damn place.

            “Step off that thing,” Dave told him. “You’re hurting me. Breaking my heart. Also you’re going to burn down the school, you make that monster set off sparks. What junkyard did they pull this decrepit heap out of?”

            The dark haired girl was staring at them. Dave let go of Cole’s wrist and did his best stoic face at her, the one Bro used to use when people asked who he’d kidnapped Dave from. Like she was being too stupid to even articulate, or raise an eyebrow at.

            “So!” Cole ignored the exchange, because he was great at being an idiot. “Do you know what the knobs on this thing do?”


End file.
